Basket of Kisses

And Deborah is out of town. At least I’ve managed to get into this post to let you know. Something strange has happened on the back end of my account.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Oh, and have a happy 4th. Please don’t litter.

We’ve decided to bring back Lipp Gloss as a once-monthly feature, just to round up highlights of the previous month.

And this June was very Juney.

Mad News

Collection Basket–a roundup of recent BoK posts

Back In The Kitchen Where The Sausage Is Made (BoK behind the scenes or just, Basketbusiness)

Am I the only one who didn’t know about Polyvore? Holy crap! The site doesn’t offer a clear explanation or mission statement, but they appear to be a fashion shopping site where you can use a very clever interface to create a montage of a particular style.

The reason this comes up is that I was googling for something I wanted to show my sister, and I found this entire page of Mad Men inspired montages (click the image to get the whole page):

I notice that no one really has a pen on their necklace, though.

The past three weeks or so, we’ve been experiencing an unusually high amount of spam in our comments. I understand other bloggers are facing this as well. This means two things:

First, some of your legitimate comments may get caught in the spam filters. Please don’t take this personally.

Second, we’ll be shutting off comments on older posts as we find they attract the attention of spammers. I’m being careful about leaving open posts that might legitimately garner comments even months down the road; the post-Golden Globes interview with Matt Weiner, for reasons unknown, is a spam favorite, but I feel like people might still say something real there. BUT, if you find an old post and can’t comment, that’s the reason.

Okay, that’s it. Carry on. Talk amongst yourselves. Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

I re-watched Red in the Face not long ago—my least favorite episode—and found a lot more depth there than I’d remembered.

So, it’s dinner at the Draper’s. Roger is telling war stories and Betty is rapt. Roger says they were bored. “Bored?” Don asks. How about scared? At the end of Roger’s story, Don says with an edge to his voice, “Bet they gave you a medal.”

Don is angry at Roger long before Roger makes a pass at Betty; his anger has been building all day. But upon re-view, we know something that Betty and Roger don’t know; something the audience didn’t know on first airing; Don is a deserter. Don pissed himself with fear. And he knows, he knows, that Roger is lying when he says he wasn’t afraid.

(Born June 29, 1965. Greatest television writer ever. Not bad, man.)

The Hollywood Reporter collates critics picks for the Emmys. Robert Bianco of USA Today likes Mad Men for Drama and January Jones for Lead Actress in a Drama. Joanne Ostrow of the Denver Post wants Slattery for Supporting Actor. Matt Roush (TV Guide), sees Mad Men for Drama and either Jones or Elisabeth Moss for Actress. Mo Ryan of the Chicago Tribune supports Mad Men (as ever), January Jones, and Jon Hamm.

Eric Deggans reprints a meditation on Don Draper as distant father, in honor of Father’s Day, of course.

The Boston Globe asks us to “imagine how different Betty Draper’s life would have been if she only had a blog” for a piece on “bad parenting.”

The Boston Globe also explores pregnancy and teen pregnancy on television, briefly mentioning Mad Men.

More on AMC’s new marketing strategies.

An article on vintage geek chic mentions Don Draper’s sweater vest.
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Okay, you guys all know I’m a fan of Mark Kelly, who plays the oft-missing mad man Dale.

Here’s a thing he’s been up to. (That’s his face all freeze-framed. Get it? Iceman? Freeze-framed?)

(Try to say that title three times fast.)

I have an “advance uncorrected proof” of an upcoming memoir from Nathan Rabin who is a writer for The Onion, in particular, The A.V. Club.

The pertinent section concerns cancellation of a review show he did on AMC called Movie Club With John Ridley. He liked many aspects of the show, but felt it was compromised in an effort to keep the reviews positive.  The cancellation was attributed to AMC  being dropped by millions of subscribers for being neither movie-y or classic-y, and so there was less money to spend. It’s never wise, or really allowed, to quote directly from what might not be the final version of a book, so I can only paraphrase the next part with the expectation that some version of it will see the light of day. Rabin considers it a bitter irony that AMC has garnered its greatest success, on both the creative or commercial front, through Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and not through movies.  He uses words in relation to MM such as “brilliant,”  “uncompromising,” and “pure.” — the opposite of what he felt Movie Club to be. Finally, he notes that abandoning classic movies was both the worst and best decision AMC ever made.

The book, for those who might be interested, is largely concerned with the author’s Dickensian childhood and how he thinks pop culture was a lifeline. Ultimately, I was expecting something even more concerned with the connection between movies, books, and T.V., and his survival, but the writer has a really sharp wit, and you’ll never see Topher Grace in the same way! Mr. Rabin is also a fan of Susanna Kaysen, so fans of Girl Interrupted might enjoy it as well.

The title: The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture, by Nathan Rabin. It’s available for pre-order.

Francine to Betty in the beauty parlor:

Do you want a Miltown? It’s the only thing that’s keeping me from chewing my nails off.

At the close of S1, Francine was losing her shit in a pretty serious way. She was talking about killing her whole family. Anyone who knows your basic Psychosis 101 knows that talk like that is an indicator of something seriously not being right.

And so here she is, end of S2, with a solution in her purse.

Who knows what brought it on, the initial crazies? She might have been getting crispy on amphetamines, to help lose that baby weight and keep her husband. So tranquilizers are the perfect next step.

This is such a subtle line of dialogue, I almost missed it. But what a way to give us a little preview of the meatier sixties, yes?