We are in a golden age of television. Today’s critically and commercially successful shows deal with diverse subject matter. They’re set in varied places and eras. While it seems that there’s no one pathway to popularity, it does seem like high stakes drama combined with a specific sense of place and time is a common thread between the last decade’s most popular shows. With that in mind, here is, in my best estimation, the blueprint for the greatest television program the world has ever known.

The year is 1914. The location, outer space. Tensions are running high between Mars-tria and Germoony. The United Asteroid Belt of America tries to remain neutral, but the murder of Spaceduke Franz Ferdinand touches off an intergalactic conflict that involves all corners of the galaxy.

On one small asteroid, a man named Jeremy Van Buren prepares to go to war. The Van Burens are wealthy, landed aristronauts. Jeremy leaves behind a family in chaos. Servants who want to learn how to pilot space crafts on their own. Daughters who are experimenting with their newly awakened sexualities.  A disabled son, injured playing football on Earth’s Texas.

Reginald Van Buren, Jeremy’s brother, agrees to manage the estate in Jeremy’s stead. Unbeknownst to Jeremy, however, Reginald has ulterior motives. He has already made alliances with several other asteroid barons in an attempt to consolidate power. He also has a rare form of space-cancer. His greed and his illness cause him to withdraw from Emily, his brother’s wife. In turn, Emily embarks on an affair with a detective from inner city Space Baltimore.

Here’s where things get really complicated. To ensure his family’s continued wealth and prominence, Reginald Van Buren has developed a chemically pure strain of pipe tobacco that gives the user an unbridled nicotine rush and a feeling of immense patriotism. He forms an alliance with Space Baltimore street tough Jupiter to distribute the tobacco throughout the streets.

Jupiter is a marketing genius, and he manages to create a word of mouth campaign that quickly skyrockets (pun intended) their brand of pipe tobacco to the top of the Space Baltimore drug underworld. When Reginald begins to synthesize other illicit substances (a triple strength sleepytime tea, cucumber sandwiches with extra cucumber), it becomes clear that Jupiter’s skills as a pitchman are going to be tested if he is to market these new innovations to Space Baltimore’s criminal element.

All the while, Space Baltimore detective Chase Umbridge, Emily Van Buren’s lover, is hot on the trail of this new kingpin. Ironically, he remains unaware that the new kid in town is none other than his paramour’s brother!

Jupiter’s keen acumen and Reginald’s brilliance and restless hunger for power drive the pair to new heights of wealth and influence. But how long can it last?

When the Earth Texas-Space Baltimore high school football teams play for the universe championship, the pressure is too much for poor crippled Dewey Van Buren. He gets busted trying to purchase an ounce of medicinal crumpet in the men’s room.

There is such a level of tension and intrigue the viewer can barely stand it.

Will Jupiter and Reginald’s empire come crashing down?

Can Dewey avoid a stint in Space Jail through his family connections?

How long will Emily and Chase carry on their dalliance?

Is one of the sisters (gasp) a homosexual?

When Jeremy returns from the war, will his family have crumbled around him?

How did everyone get into space?

Also, everyone has British accents and there are dragons. And that’s just Episode 1.

If this show were real, it would set the internet on fire with fan response. Viewers would debate Emily’s status as a feminist figure and Reginald’s moral fiber. Superfans would create a system of physics to explain the effects of Space Cancer. Disabled watchers would commend Dewey Van Buren’s nuanced character, resilient yet flawed.

It would be called: Orbital Resonance.

Ultimately, Orbital Resonance would win eleven Emmy awards and be cancelled after once season on account of its abysmal ratings.

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Paige Michalchuk — You’ve been prescribed what people would deem “fun” pills but refuse to share them with friends because you “actually need them.”

Manny Santos — As a teen you weren’t allowed to have a boyfriend, but owned thongs that would set off an airport metal detector.

Peter Stone — You date emotional fixer-uppers.

Emma Nelson — You make people uncomfortable at restaurants.

Jay Hogart — You don’t have a favorite book.

Ellie Nash — You believe moving to New York City will fix everything.

Spinner Mason — You’ve spent actual money on Alien Ant Farm paraphernalia.

Darcy Edwards — You really believe in “Catholic School Chic” and have owned several pleated skirts despite going to a public school.

Sean Cameron — You’ve drunkenly purchased Spaghettios (or similar Chef Boyardee products) in the past six months.

Hazel Aden — You are afraid of hand jobs.

Spike Nelson — You’re worried you may have cut your hair too short this time, every time.

Craig Manning — Your ability to attract the opposite sex despite being a total mess is really irritating for your emotionally stable friends.

Holly J. Sinclair — You used to wear white eyeliner.

Marco Del Rossi — You’re unsure of how to wear a vest but hope to someday pull it off.

Alex Nunez — You haven’t spoken to your parents in years.

Snake Simpson — There are too many forceful women in your life.

Liberty Van Zandt — As a child, you recorded audio of yourself giving fake interviews and award acceptance speeches; you still talk to yourself in the mirror occasionally.

J.T. Yorke — Your penis is abnormally large but you didn’t figure out what to do with it for a long, long time.

Mia Jones — You’d probably be screwed if you weren’t so good looking.

Joseph Jeremiah — You desperately wish high school never ended.

Toby Isaacs — You’ve read The Game and accidentally employ pick-up tactics when you’ve had too much to drink.

Ashley Kerwin — Your nail polish is perpetually chipped.

Jimmy Brooks — You have a lot going for you, but you’re impotent.

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Last week, I saw the first episode of Breaking Bad. Yes, I know. I know. I’m so far behind the curve that there’s another curve on its way (Downton Abbey, son!). I watched the pilot, and, surprise (to no one), it was really good. I was riveted from the opening scene. I can’t believe how far the dramatic tension escalates. If watching a TV show about meth is this exciting, then seeing meth in person would probably give me a heart attack, and actually using the drug would cause my hands and feet to explode off of my body. I am, as they say, hooked. The first three seasons are on Netflix. I’ve given up showering to watch.

Here’s the ridiculous part. I had literally no good reason to not watch Breaking Bad. When the show began airing, I lived in the United States and owned a television. I didn’t find the New Mexico landscape loathsome or hold a personal vendetta against Bryan Cranston. I had Sunday night commitments, but DVR, DVD, and the internet give any motivated viewer plenty of ways to get around “appointment television.” Maybe you get one season of grace before a program really catches on, but by 2009, I should have been all aboard. Why wasn’t I?

The embarrassing truth is, I don’t trust my friends. Well, that’s inaccurate. I trust my friends with my life. I’d let them babysit my (hypothetical) children, cut my (hypothetical) hair, or even substitute for me at my (hypothetical) job. But for some reason, when a friend recommends a band, book, movie, or television show, I balk.

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll check it out when I’ve got a minute.” And then, with very few exceptions, I never check it out ever. My life becomes a web of white lies and excuses. In the amount of time I’ve spent explaining why I haven’t yet watched The Wire, I could have watched all five seasons of The Wire. Boy, did I show them. I really stuck it to those people who I like and who like me and want to share things that have made their life richer in hopes of enriching my life as well. Take that, everyone!

What’s worse is that my friends rarely steer me wrong in any memorable way. The last time I remember that happening was in 1999, when my friend Dan insisted that the new Insane Clown Posse album was actually pretty good. Spoiler Alert: It was not. Since then, friends have basically put a foot on my chest and forced me to enjoy Mad Men, The Hold Steady, Everything is Illuminated (the book), and Marc Maron’s WTF podcast among other things. So the stuff I like, I remember, and the things I don’t care for tend to fade from my memory. Except the Insane Clown Posse. Some things you can’t unhear.

So why do I keep doing this? Why, when it comes to matters of entertainment, do I distrust people to whom I would donate a kidney?

The number one reason is probably that I prefer not to feel like I was missing out on something great. If I’m not in on the ground floor with a TV show, I will ignore it. The better and bigger the thing is, the deeper I stick my head into the sand. If it’s a movie or short-lived television series, you might be able to get me on board. I watched Arrested Development and Glengarry Glen Ross under duress. I even started watching Firefly despite my unexpected aversion to science fiction. Seriously, though? The West Wing? There’s like seven seasons of that. And they’re all worth seeing? No thank you. Yes, I am aware that this is how dummies and cowards live.

I also have a weird, asinine, hipstery pride over my “selective” taste. This idea is totally insane for me to uphold because I don’t have good taste in anything. I sincerely love songs with big, dumb hooks, frivolous books, and Live Free or Die Hard. It is ludicrous for me to act like I have standards for how I spend my leisure time. I do not. If I hadn’t just started Breaking Bad, I would be spending my free time watching YouTube videos of freestyle rappers.

So I’ve decided to get over myself and trust my friends. They’re suggesting things that they’ve enjoyed and think I would like as well. That’s it. My friends have rarely led me astray, and I have to trust that there is no way they’ve just now started recommending horrible things to me as pranks. And even if they were, I’d most likely enjoy them anyway. As of today, I’m on a quest to enjoy all of the classic things that my friends and family members have recommended to me. I’m done being stubborn. I’m ready to appreciate all the finer things that popular (or unpopular) culture has to offer.

What I’m trying to say is, I hope The Godfather is on Netflix.

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Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

While everyone, including Sir Hamm himself, has long since accepted that Jon Hamm doesn’t actually exist — he is simply a fleshy pink vessel for one Don Draper — it does not stop the man who embodies such a character from being some serious, serious husband material. While, no, technically you will not be marrying Don Draper, you can rest assured that you are marrying a man both sexy and intuitive enough to bring to life such an incredible character (and make us lust for him, despite his apparent lack of a soul).

And as Jonnycakes has demonstrated with his appearances on SNL and films like Bridesmaids, he’s no stranger to a little low-brow comedy when the occasion calls for it. If you’re not currently aware of a little gem called “Jon Hamm’s John Ham,” I respectfully request you head on over to your nearest video website and check it out. And while you may spend your deliriously happy matrimonial years insisting he wear a suit and drink rye on the rocks, there is nothing that Mr. Hamm won’t do to make you happy. I promise.

Name: Jon Hamm

Age: 40 (Damn, he looks good.)

Occupation: Bringer back of all things tailored, restrained, and delightfully devoid of conscience.

Description: Hamm, having gotten his start in small movie roles way back when, as well as being a brief acting teacher for the world’s luckiest 8th-grade class, finally struck Hollywood gold as the delectable anti-hero of Mad Men. He is also, it must unfortunately be added, one-half of what seems to be a stable, loving marriage to actress and screenwriter, Jennifer Westfeldt. We can only assume, though, that anyone cool enough to snag the Hammburgler is someone more than cool enough to share.

Benefits to Marriage: While marriage to Hamm would clearly include invites and cred at all the most exclusive Hollywood parties where people come from miles away to fawn over his performance, his depth, and his shiny little side-part, it would also involve a lot of cuddling. Something about that hard-wrought role where he has to pretend not to care (as well as those adorable glimpses into his range which show that he most certainly does) would likely leave JonJon with a dire need to spoon. You could be that lucky little spoon. That could be you.

Drawbacks: He is clearly contractually obligated to have simulated sex with about 1903982308 gorgeous women per episode, so let’s hope you’re not the jealous type.

You Must Be: Willing to travel, comfortable with the smell of herbal cigarettes, and not made uncomfortable with him being in the same room as Christina Hendricks.

The Dowry Jon Brings: 100 acres of the most strong cornfields in southern California, 76 potbellied sows, a large barn ready to be painted by a loving couple, and 134 cartons of fake Lucky Strikes.

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A few days before Christmas, HBO announced that what was the second season finale of their comedy-drama How to Make It in America, would, in fact, be the series finale. By pulling the plug on the New York City fake-it-til-you-make-it story of Ben Epstein, Cam Calderon and their fashion co. dreams, they allowed for an entirely new light on the last episode.

The writers of the show used the finale as a hook into the third season, with every character brought to ‘down and out, nothing to lose’ status, still as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as they were in the pilot. As a final kick in Ben’s sartorially-gifted pants, a well-connected fashion rep tells Ben his brand has no future, and although he has talent, he doesn’t have enough. In a season finale, this means more fuel to his fire. In a series finale, this means maybe he just doesn’t have enough.

But of course Ben is fiction and our days are never bookends to seasons but just part of one, very long season. Ben is fiction in his unattainably relaxed attitude to women, success and failure, in his good looks and charm, in his crazy cool friends and associates but not in the ambiguity of his talent and the opaque veil that is his ambition.

In New York City, as in any other city where young and creative folk flock to make it, there are perhaps a nearly infinite supply of Ben Epsteins in art, acting, comedy, fashion, writing, acting and dance and a very finite number of positions in these fields that will result in an exhibit, Letterman special, Spring collection, novel, blockbuster or write-up in The New Yorker. And that’s the secret. Well, the entire secret is that contrary to the sturdy solipsism found in many gifted individuals, they are not outside of the equation.

In other words, it’s possible to have talent but not enough.

Every time a movie character gnarls ‘kid’s got talent’, and we imagine him saying that about us, we always fail to ask ourselves ‘how much talent?’. It’s preposterous, that we could have talent, a lot of talent, skill, some genius, a little spunk and a dab of secret sauce but not enough. And beyond the terribleness of this fact of life is that the one thing stopping you from rubbing the clouds from your eyes and seeing if they clear up or rain is that one other ingredient you need for success is the blinding faith that you can get it.

How to Make It in America was never going to be a hit. Critics saw it as Entourage: New York City (who wants two Entourages?), and couldn’t stop themselves from using ‘loose thread’-related puns. But the show was actually pretty cool and, like its protagonist, strove to put itself out there. And unlike the other two series it got canned with — Hung and Bored to Death — it carried a message to the still-inspired: it’s not always up to you whether you make it, but it is up to you to be young while you figure it out.

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image – How To Make It In America

Wheel of Existentialism

In this adapted version of Wheel of Fortune, the host (Franz Kafka) asks the three contestants how much money they’d like to walk away with at the end of the game. After completing the first two rounds, Kafka will take the contestants aside to play the “Hubris Round,” in which they will be asked questions like, “How confident are you that you will win this game?” and, depending on their responses and how confident they are, two of them will be drowned/ shot/ eaten. The winner goes home with the money, and his life.

Pyramid

New World Order conspiracy theorists compete to see who among them is the most mentally unstable/ lives in their mom’s basement “most intensely.”

Is It Organic?

This show would air on the Food Network or that one Food Network spinoff channel that tries to appeal to young people. Typical contestants would be vegans, foodies, “progressive soccer moms” who put organic apple juice in their kid’s lunches, the children of the “progressive soccer moms” (probably named Ethan), and also homeless people. The contestants would have to discern whether or not the food presented to them is organic or not, bonus points if they can determine what level of organic certification the food has.

Hotspot Hunter

This thirty-minute show would air either before or after Jeopardy. It would consist of 2-5 contestants running around an urban area with laptops in search of working and unprotected WiFi hotspots. The show’s host will be a Scandinavian bro named Sven.

Televised Monopoly

Great Monopoly players join together to play a televised version of this classic board game (occasionally featuring celebrities or prolific bankers). It would basically just be regular Monopoly, except played in a darkened Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?-esque chamber and scored to dramatic music.

So You Think You Can Refinance

The contestants on this show are couples who need to escape from under their adjustable-rate mortgages for something more secure that won’t lead them into foreclosure. While the contestants will change from episode to episode, the show will have two permanent fixtures playing the show’s villains, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The contestants will rarely win, and most of the episodes will end in a segment endearingly referred to by Freddie and Fannie as “Economic Collapse!”

Let’s Make a Deal

A lot like the original Let’s Make a Deal, except that contestants will compete to win illicit drugs instead of money. People will still dress up in crazy costumes, except this time it’s because they’re all high.

El Precio Es Correcto

Spanish version of The Price is Right. This is probably already a thing.

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I know there’s an Asian guy and an African American guy on the show, but it would seem most of the characters on The Walking Dead, a show I dearly adore, have thick Southern — specifically, Georgian — accents. Let me reassure you: not all southerners speak like Bo and Luke Duke. Thanks to being raised by television, many members of the past couple generations of southerners have shed the ole twangy parlance in exchange for a dialect more conducive to getting through a job interview without having our intelligence questioned. Thanks to George Bush, Forrest Gump, and a thousand movies where the racist/ homophobic/ rapist villains had thick Southern accents, it’s hard to take a person with a southern twang seriously — which is unfortunate because plenty of smart people have one.

We don’t all use words like “ain’t,” “ya’ll,” “folks,” and “shucks.” We don’t all use double negatives like, “haven’t got no food.” Even my grandmother, who grew up in Arkansas (which, upon discovery, people often say, “Oh, I’m so sorry,”) doesn’t use “ain’t” because, as she would say, “I was raised better than that.”

We’re not all racists like Merle or Daryl. Of course, you know that, right? Right? I heard a recent Google data poll found that West Virginia had the highest number of searches for the n-word, and I’ll concede that the south may have a higher percentage of gigantic, over-the-top, burning-crosses-on-front-lawns-type racists, but it’s rare that I meet one of those. It’s rare that I meet someone who just comes out and says, for example, “I hate black people.” The first time I ever heard someone say that and mean it was actually here in Chicago.

We’re not all armed. Okay, a lot of us are, but not all of us or even most. Some of these gun owners were in the armed forces, some enjoy hunting, some want to defend themselves, and a few, a tiny few, want to be ready to retaliate against Obama’s imminent socialist revolution. It seems like most of them live in small-town rural areas, and we have a lot of those. I don’t understand it, but to each his/ her own.

We don’t all wear cowboy hats and overalls. Some of us shop at the Gap and not highway truck stops. We don’t all have names like Otis, Hershel, and Merle. We’re not all wife-beating hillbillies.

On their own, each of these images — guns, racism, southern accents, overalls — is perfectly understandable, especially in the context of a zombie apocalypse in the rural south, but when combined onscreen — and, mind you, I love The Walking Dead — it’s disappointing, particularly when a few of the characters seem like lazily hashed together amalgamations of these stereotypes like Carol’s husband Ed, Hershel, etc.

Furthermore, we don’t all live in trailers. Yes, they travel in a trailer because it’s a more comfortable form of transportation in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, and yes, it was also in the comic book, but the image of a bunch of small-town southerners living in a trailer is not helping our image. Of course, as if the trailer wasn’t bad enough, then they move into an antebellum style plantation farmhouse with an old man who looks and sounds like everyone’s image of a slave owner. At one point, he calls Glenn “that Asian boy,” and like any good republican, he’s pro-life — even with zombies.

Misogyny, also known as “being a southern gentleman,” is on full display here, particularly with Andrea, who wants to have a gun, but none of the boys think she should have one. After all, the delicate women folk need to be taken care of because they’re emotionally unstable. Then, once she does get a gun, the first thing she does with it is accidentally shoot a fellow survivor. Looks like the ladies need to leave the shootin’ to the menfolk after all, huh? They don’t have time to be troubling their pretty little heads about guns between all those periods, hormones, and babies. This is a common theme that runs through the show: men’s practicality and women’s sentimentality. In the pilot episode, the character Morgan recalls his and his wife’s reaction to the zombie outbreak: “I’m out there packing stuff for survival, and she’s gathering photo albums.”

How will we get around now? Oh, yes, we will ride horses. While wearing cowboy hats. You think I’m being ridiculous. Of course they ride horses through the post-apocalyptic wilderness — they can’t drive cars obviously. Of course they travel through unpopulated rural areas that might have creepy plantation farmhouses to avoid zombie herds. Of course everyone knows southerners aren’t all hillbillies, racists, and weirdoes who keep monsters in barns. It’s just a TV show.

But the thing is: they don’t know. Every time someone finds out I’m from Texas, I get asked questions like, “Did you vote for George Bush?” or “How come you don’t have an accent?” or “Do you ride a horse to school?” or “Do you hate black people?” or “Do you believe in intelligent design?” or “Do you own a gun?” This is no joke. I’m not saying The Walking Dead is deliberately perpetuating stereotypes about southerners because of course, there are plenty of real southerners like Rick, Merle, and Hershel — beer drinking good ole boys, gun totin’ cowboy types — but make no mistake, they’re the minority, not the rule.

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image – The Walking Dead

1. Zooey Deschanel – highly profitable child-like sense of wonder + British-accented HPV = Katy Perry
2. Asher Roth – hair = Mac Miller
3. Britney Spears – rehab + (glitter x Jack Daniels) = Ke$ha
4. Adele + absolutely no sense of restraint over vocal wailing and show-boaty high notes = Christina Aguilera
5. Mariah Carey + terrible life choices – Nickelodeon-approved husband = Whitney Houston
6. Michael Fassbender + the vague sense that this man would kill you silently in your sleep if given sufficient reason = Viggo Mortenson
7. Michael Cera + 50 years + an overly eager support of the adoption process = Woody Allen
8. Lance Bass – life behind the eyes + a 74-hour work day = Ryan Seacrest
9. Daddy Yankee + (CULO! x MUJERES!) = Pitbull
10. Lil Kim – demure, restrained conservative attitude = Khia
11. Kanye West – the last semblance of self-awareness he has about what a massive tool he comes off as = Tyler the Creator
12. Young Will Smith – charm + (Canadian inoffensiveness x the assumption that anyone cares if he banged Nicki Minaj or not) = Drake
13. Kim Kardashian – everything that makes Kim Kardashian even remotely interesting + spawn = Kourtney Kardashian
14. Madonna + exploitation of sociopolitcal movements – a pornographic coffee table book, though we know that’s only a matter of time = Lady Gaga
15. Celine Dion – incredibly creepy husband/ father figure – charming French Canadian bilingualism + incredibly irritating song named after you = Barbara Streisand
16. Marilyn Manson – intelligence + (Faygo x meth) = ICP
17. Reese Witherspoon – cuteness + anti-depressants = Kirsten Dunst
18. Johnny Depp – pretentious pseudo-Eurotrash thing + British accent – any semblance of talent = Orlando Bloom
19. Glenn Beck + the slightest bit of control over political tears/ self-righteousness = Keith Olbermann
20. Luke Wilson + that scene in Brady Bunch where Marcia got hit in the face with a football in the back yard = Owen Wilson

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The words are flying out quicker than I can digest them. People are so proud of their cities. “Where are you taking her?” one asks. “She has to see the Bean – let me know when you’re going, I want to come,” another chimes. “Whatever she wants to do,” my friend says. Then she turns to me, “Hey, did you know the Winslow house is like, five minutes away from here?”

This is the part where my jaw drops. I’ll be honest – I didn’t come to Chicago with any particular goal in mind other than to see my friend, but the mention of Family Matters made my ears perk up like someone had just told me I’d won a free something. “Really? Can we go there? After this, maybe?” “This” is drinks with her coworkers at a cute taco bar. Angels and Mariachis. We’re sitting outside, so naturally my eyes begin to dart around in search of the coveted Winslow home. “Sure,” she agrees.

“If you’re interested in visiting movie houses, there’s a ton nearby. The Home Alone house is in the suburbs, and John Hughes shot basically all of his films here,” someone offers. My eyes light up like I’d just snorted any number of white, powdery substances. “Maybe we should do this during the day? We can map out all of the houses we want to go to and…” my friend starts. “Sure,” I say. “As long as we can take pictures.”

On Labor Day, three of us pile into a rented car and prepare for the drive. Shannon, Mark, and me. I’d been in Chicago for a few days now, and partying with my former college roommate like we were still in college had taken its toll on all of us. Our minds and bodies were moving in slow motion. Still, I couldn’t leave Chicago without taking this ride. It’d been on my mind all weekend.

I sit shotgun and hold the directions in my hand, feeling less-than-confident about directing our driver. I’m too distracted by Chicago. It happens every time I visit a new city, some sort of foreign familiarity washes over me and I feel like I’ve seen all of it before except it’s slightly off-kilter; a tweaked version of something I know already. It’s kind of like falling in love again. Distracting.

“We’re going to the Winslow’s first,” Shannon announces. “Sweet,” I say. I glare out of the window. A rock station plays softly in the background.

We arrive in 15 minutes or so. Shannon eases up on the gas pedal as we drive down the street. “Keep your eyes peeled, it’s going to be on the left,” I say, which is sort of obvious because there’s a park to the right of us. Did you know the Winslow family lived across the street from a park? I didn’t.

We park alongside a playground and look at each other stupidly. “Now what?” I ask. There’s a ton of people outside, doing normal things like bringing their kids to Little League or watering their lawns; and then there’s us, casing the joint, waiting for the right moment to hop out of the car and take photographs of a stranger’s home.

We reluctantly stand at the entrance of the park and zoom in with our lenses. The house seems to have been frozen in time. Wedged between two modern residences, it felt a bit left behind — the way most of the ‘90s does. I was happy it hadn’t been restored, perhaps selfishly so.

We snap a few shots of the house, none of them spectacular because we were intent on remaining inconspicuous. Do people know what we’re doing, whose house this is? Does this happen frequently? A man walks through the sideyard to the front of the house and begins fiddling with a front step. We all feel slightly distressed – is this awkward and are we being obtrusive or is this kind of thing expected, what is it like to live in this house or in any house made famous by a popular sitcom? “Let’s go,” someone says, and we all agree and silently trudge back to the car.

Once we’re situated, the tension melts and we dissolve into relaxed giggles. “That was so weird,” one of us says, all of us say. Home Alone house is up next, so we buckle up and set out on the road.

 ______

In high school, I shared a county with a wealthy enclave called the Redwoods. Intimidating mansions peppered the mountain it was situated on; the higher you went, the more impressive the plot. At the very top of the mountain was a gated residence that belonged to Madonna. She didn’t actually live there; in fact, it’d been on the market for some time when I’d first heard of it. Hidden from plain view, the only way to see the actual house was to pull into the driveway – a feat that proved difficult, since the gate was locked indefinitely. Except for one day when my friends and I drove by on a blunt ride. The gate was wide open, so we pulled in and navigated the winding driveway. We chattered excitedly; so much had led to this moment. The buildup was incredible. When we’d come to a stop, we rolled down the windows and peeked out. The house engulfed us with its mass, casting shadows over my friends, the car, the mountain. Swallowing us. Even a house no one lives in has the potential to take on a life of its own.

The McAllisters live in a nice neighborhood, we decide. I have trouble connecting to this one, and I question if watching Home Alone to refresh my memory before coming would’ve been the right thing to do. It’s unfamiliar but impressive nonetheless. Vivid red brick with creamy white trim. It’s quieter than the Winslow’s block, zero foot traffic and minimal cars. We take turns standing in front of the house, open palms on our cheeks and our mouths agape in an exaggerated “O.” This is easy, I think. Whenever a car appears, we run onto the curb, pretending to be lost or stretching or just… normal. We look away as they drive past, down or up or at each other; except one time, we see a Jeep full of guys our age, showing us their teeth as they sail by. It’s then that we realize they don’t belong here either; that they’d come for the same reasons we had. The owners of the home crossed my mind again – where were they on this holiday Monday? At a friend’s barbecue? Shopping a Labor Day sale? How strange it must be, to have people visiting your home without knowing where or who you are.

 ______

I grew up in a Park Slope co-op. Unlike the majority of the houses in the neighborhood, it wasn’t a brownstone. Instead it had two grey pillars; the door and panes were painted a baby blue. We moved away when I was 13, but I’d make time to visit whenever I found myself in Brooklyn. I also made a habit of taking my boyfriends there, like it was an exhibit in the museum I’d curated. Maybe I thought seeing it would help them understand something about me that I could never quite articulate.

I took the first boyfriend to see it after we’d spent the day shooting photographs. He’d taught me how to use a camera at Coney Island and Greenwood Cemetery and afterward, I told him, I’d like to go to Smiling Pizza on 7^th Avenue. My dad would take me there for lunch whenever we spent the day in Prospect Park. “Let’s go to my house, while we’re over here,” I said. My house. He agreed. “I want to take a picture,” I told him, and I did. He also took a few, and when the rolls of film were developed, his photos were decidedly better than mine. I’d been standing too close.

Our adrenaline levels are ebbing and flowing. “I’m really dehydrated,” I say once we’re driving away from the brick house. “I need… something. Can we stop somewhere before the last house?” We pull into a small strip. I order soup and water and a Diet Coke. We pass the camera around, laughing at the photos because who knows why? “I’m so happy we’re doing this,” I say aloud, or maybe I say it to myself. I picture myself in an alternate universe, back home in New York and wasting the day and my body and my mind. I am so happy, I think.

My friends and I had a blunt trail, one that took us through the winding roads of Chestnut Ridge. The third or fourth time we drove those roads, I discovered and dumbly coined what’s now referred to as “The Cool Room.” The Cool Room is an uninspired name for a room that’s anything but. It was on the second floor of a stranger’s home and had large, inviting windows. The lights were always on. I don’t know what kind of room The Cool Room was – if it was a living room or a study or a bedroom – all I know is that every inch of space was covered with something I wanted to touch. Colorful books and swirling tapestries and marionettes and art deco light fixtures. We’d slow down whenever we drove by, but it was impossible to take it all in at once. Years later, we drove by and The Cool Room was gone. The owners had redecorated or moved, who knows. I never found out who lived there.

“Goddammit. We can’t see anything!” We’re parked outside of Cameron Frye’s house, made infamous in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – a film as old as I am.  What you maybe don’t know about this house is that it’s actually a garage. There’s a paneled, partially transparent house on the same plot of land, but it didn’t appear in the movie. Cameron’s bedroom, the Ferrari – they shared the same home. I wouldn’t learn this until later on.

The road we’re on is narrow; parking the car would prevent two cars from passing one another. Luckily, there aren’t many cars on this street – save for one, parked in the driveway. A pickup truck. We pull over and walk up and down the curb, but we can’t get a view of the garage without trespassing. “Come over here,” I say, crunching fresh foliage beneath my feet. “I can sort of see something if I just zoom in…” but no one comes. We’re fatigued, discouraged. The three of us exchange a look that says maybe it’s time to pack it in.

We resign to the car and begin to pull a U-Turn when we see them – another car full of kids looking for Cameron Frye’s house. I see them and I don’t want to give up just yet. “Keep going.” We drive to the top of the road, then turn around, passing the house once more. To our surprise, a tall, older man is rummaging through the front of the pickup. “Steph, ask him if we can see the house!” and I freeze up. Are we doing this? Am I doing this? I roll the window down. “Excuse me,” I yell, my voice raspy, “Can we take a look at the house?”

One day, my doorbell rang and when I opened the door, an older woman was on the other side. “May I speak with Lawrence?” she said. My forehead wrinkled in disapproval. “Why?” Lawrence was my then 92-year-old grandfather. “I’d just like to ask him a few questions.” My guard is up, waving like a red flag. “My mother handles all of his business. He’s 92. Who are you?” “Your aunt called because she visited yesterday, and she’s concerned about your grandfather.” My muscles relax. “I don’t think so.” The social worker persists. “Your Aunt Karen wasn’t here?” Had I been drinking a beverage at the time, I would’ve spit it out in disbelief. “Who? I haven’t seen her in well over a decade. I can assure you she wasn’t here yesterday, or ever. She doesn’t even have this address. If you want to speak to my grandfather, you have to go through my mom.”

I shut the door and called my mom at work. When she came home, my grandfather told her that it’d slipped his mind; but her estranged sister had visited the day before. Walked around our home without our knowledge and man, were we upset. Our home had been violated. We had been violated.

 ______

“I don’t own the place, I’m just keeping it for the owner,” he tells us. He’s a tall, fit man in his fifties or maybe his forties, if he’d had a rough life. At first you don’t see them, but there are welts on his skin – the shape and size of cigar burns. He continues. “I’ll show you the garage, just don’t wander off the path.”

We walk around the side of the house and there it is: the glass garage. It’s empty now, or mostly empty. A mop and bucket rest in the northernmost corner. The garage sits on stilts, and beneath it is a ravine 30 or 50 or some other large number of feet below. We could die here, I think.

“People think they can just come here, you know? But it’s my home. I’ve been assaulted twice protecting it. Once, a bunch of kids came here to have a picnic – when I caught them and told them to leave, one of the guys pushed me, told me ‘Don’t ruin our day,’ …imagine? I mean, this is my home. I live here,” he tells us as he suffocates a cigarette with his sneaker.

Everything I’d done that day replayed in my head. Was I a bad person? I would never threaten or assault someone, but I’d forgotten that these weren’t just houses, they were homes. With people living in them. How could I forget that? The laughs and the pictures and the excited air we were exhaling – those shiny moments dulling with every word he spoke until they were extinguished completely, like the butt under his foot.

“The movie wasn’t even that good,” he says.

______

The second boyfriend I took to see my Park Slope co-op wasn’t my boyfriend yet, but I wanted him to be. And eventually he was, and eventually he wasn’t. We had some time to kill before a concert in the park, so I took him there. But when we arrived, the baby blue door was gone. A brown door with gold accents took its place and that’s when I knew it wasn’t mine anymore. That’s when I knew every shiny moment grows dull, it’s just a matter of time.

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There exists three cardinal sins in the world of pop culture: There is being a white girl who uses the N-word freely in her terrible, terrible rap songs, there is being an absentee father to a Kardashian baby, and there is telling hipsters what they are supposed to like. Hipsters, zine-writers, alternative cool people all wrapped up in their sweaters made of Alpaca and smug superiority — they know what they like, and they know what they don’t. To in any way even imply that you know what is “edgy,” “alternative,” or, God forbid, “indie” is akin to telling active combat veterans you “totally know what they went through.” And when pop culture decided that Zooey Deschanel, with her forehead-devouring bangs and her sparkly little eyes, would be forced down our throats as all things just weird enough to be cute — well, the hipsters didn’t like it. They didn’t like it, and they took to their blogs, en masse, to tell you just how not into it they were.

I’ll be the first to admit that Zooey is not my cup of tea. I’ve taken a little crack at her here and there — a one-liner even appeared on this very site — but I’ve never felt the overwhelming urge to retire to the warm comfort of Microsoft Word and bleed out a 2,000 word screed on how she ruins my life. When it comes down to it, I just don’t think she’s a very good actress, and she has a shtick. I’m not big on schticky actors. I don’t, however, ascribe to her cutesy little dresses all that is wrong with modern society, the portrayal of women in the media, and the stagnation of 20-something men everywhere. And this puts me in something of a minority amongst young internet writers, as the new thing to do is, ostensibly, hate everything she does with the kind of passion usually reserved for war criminals and serial killers. She is deserving of so much umbrage, so much resentment, so much righteous indignation, I’m not sure if she doesn’t insult orphans and put cigarettes out on kittens and I’m the only one not aware of it.

Take, for example, her recent rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner at the World Series. A perfectly “meh” interpretation that showcased her monotone, not-bad-but-not-great vocals that were once so charming in Elf. She wasn’t my favorite performer, but neither are most of the people who plod through sporting events to promote their new — err, I mean, honor their country. Either way, it was alright. Cut to the next morning, though, and the blogosphere is a veritable angry mob, complete with pitchforks, torches, and effigies of be-fringed women in baby-doll dresses. That performance was not just bad, it was INSULTING TO OUR VERY COUNTRY’S HONOR AND TRADITION. One would have thought she’d taken the original copy of the Declaration of Independence, urinated on it, and sang the Soviet national anthem as she flipped off a bunch of handicapped children carrying sparklers.

And yeah, her new show is pandering and stupid — but so are ninety percent of sitcoms out these days. Since when do we have this incredible gold standard for stupid, rom-com-esque sitcoms about a bunch of twenty-somethings living in an apartment? That’s right, we don’t. We just hate Zooey Deschanel, and want to drag her through our 140-character-or-less mud. We want to act as though suddenly, a one-dimensional female character and a bunch of dopey, milquetoast guys trading lame puns is somehow an affront to our delicate sensibilities, when really, that’s pretty much the formula for any and all sitcoms since the big bang (theory). See what I did there?

Anyway, the reason we hate her is probably pretty straightforward. She’s the Uncle Sam of MPDGs, pointing at us from our screens and asking us to join in her doily-covered world of conversations with sock puppets and philosophy based on the writings of Maurice Sendak. And though this is just another shallow, boring character archetype — like all the rest we are only to happy to swallow — she insults our intelligence by parading as “different,” “indie,” “originial,” and “representing the weird girls.” And if you’re actually a girl who, like Zooey, doesn’t really know how to act around people and makes weird statements all the time — you know how very un-cute the world finds it. Essentially, Zooey’s character (and there is only one) has mild Asperger’s, but because she is very good-looking, people find it charming. The hipsters hate it because it’s co-opting and bastardizing their precious, adorable, alternative style and making it into something fake — but worse than fake, it’s being made accessible.

But just because your favorite “type” is the new one being turned into another boring, Hollywood cut-out, there’s no need to get so angry. Don’t worry, Zooey Deschanel doesn’t make your Smiths-liking girlfriend any less original, and she’s not going to come into your apartment at night and redecorate with a bunch of cutesy bullshit. Live and let live, and blog about something really offensive — like how completely inaccurate the Two Broke Girls portrayal of Williamsburg is, like, you have no idea.

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