Jezebel: my so-called life

Do You Suffer From Angela Chase Syndrome?

hortense — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:15:00 EDT

I have a speech impediment. It is not a lisp, or a stutter, or a habit of swallowing letters or softening r's into aaahr's. I have a problem that can best be described as Angela Chase Syndrome.

Observe the affliction in action, will you?

Much like Angela Chase, I can not, like, get through like, a sentence, without like, adding the word like, about like 9 million times, or whatever. It has gotten to the point where I can't even type without adding "likes" into the sentences, in order to convey a proper speech pattern, a sense of timing, a type of personality or some such. "Like" is the worst of it, but it is not the only issue: "you know," "goes" (as in, "So she goes, blah blah,") and "right?" are all repeat offenders as well.

It can be a blessing and a curse: I tend to think in pictures, and it often takes me a second to catch up with my brain, so "like" and "you know" give me a few extra seconds to access the words to describe what I'm trying to say. But at the same time, I recognize that it doesn't appear that way on the outside: it often sounds like I'm 15 years old and like, kind of like, stupid, or something, you know?

I know I'm not alone on this one: the conversations I have with women my age are filled with likes, you knows, whatevers, etc. It just a normalized way of speaking at this point, though as I get older, I am starting to realize that speaking in Angela Chase mode is off-putting and irritating, to the point where I cringe as soon as a "like" or "you know" escapes my mouth. I suppose there are worse things one might have to deal with: the dreaded baby voice, for example, that leads so many women to begin a conversation with, "Hi-yeeee!" and end it with "Think yaaauwwww, mmmbyee! (thank you, bye)." And, of course, there's that obnoxious mode of speaking wherein people insist? Upon ending all of their sentences? In a question? Even though they aren't actually asking a question?

The best thing, I guess, that one can do to fight Angela Chase Syndrome is to just be aware of it and try, in the smallest ways, to work on it. A small voice is a sign of someone who is unsure of what they are saying; "likes" and "you knows" are hesitations, pauses from a stream of certainties. I am almost 30 years old. I should probably stick to saying the things I am sure of, and leave the "likes" and "you knows" behind.

Or whatever. You know.

What say you, commenters? Do you suffer from Angela Chase Syndrome? And is there any way to fix it?

Earlier: Who's To Blame For Little Girl Voices?

Consider Yourself Dumped, Jordan Catalano

hortense — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:30:00 EDT

On lazy Sunday mornings, I like to hang out on the couch and have marathons of my favorite TV shows. Every Fall, I get an overwhelming urge to devote at least 8 hours to "My So Called Life", the beloved 1994 series that launched the careers of Claire Danes and Jared Leto. I don't know what it is about the fall, exactly; maybe it's the desire to rock some warm flannel or dye my hair a lovely shade of Crimson Glow. But when the leaves begin to slip from the trees and the air fills with cinnamon and cider (clearly, I live in New England), I find myself putting on My So Called Life episodes and reminiscing about the first time I watched the show, when I was 14 and madly in love with Jared Leto's character, a beautiful but blank young man who went by the name of Jordan Catalano.

Jordan Catalano is everything a 14 year old girl could want: he's pretty, and he's "mysterious", which, as we find out when we're older, is just teenage boy code for "kind of shady." Jordan Catalano is the kid in your math class who never looked at you, who never looked at anyone, even though everyone in the world was admiring him. He had a pained expression on his face at all times as he leaned up against the lockers and put Visine in his eyes. When I was 14, I thought, "Look at that, he's so numb he has to use artificial tears!" I now realize Jordan Catalano was just high. Often.

Over the years, I've uncovered some other unpleasant truths about the Jordan Catalanos of the world. Yes, he was lovely, and yes, he had a way about him, but sometimes, that's all there is. There isn't a great mystery in everyone, though we like to think so, and sometimes behind a wall like Jordan's, there's just another wall, or another, the kind that never ever wants to come down. Angela Chase went out of her way to connect with Jordan Catalano, helping him open up, helping him learn how to read, and he repaid her by sleeping with her best friend and then winning her back through a manipulative letter that he had poor emo-tastic Brian Krakow write for him.

When I watch the show now, I want to warn Angela, to tell her to run run run and keep on running, to tell her to dance with poor Krakow at the World Happiness Dance, but I know it wouldn't do any good, anyhow. Everyone meets their Jordan Catalano in this world; everyone falls for someone who isn't what they seem.

The love I carried around for Jordan Catalano has officially dried up. He's just another mistake, another almost, another lesson learned.

Still: don't you love the way he leans?

Couples Yoga Will Save Your Ailing Marriage... Or Not

Jessica — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:00:00 EDT

The phrase "spice up your sex life" gets almost 200,000 hits on Google. We're collectively so bored with our longterm significant others that there are several industries and hundreds of self-help books that have sprouted in the chasm left by sexual frustration. The Minneapolis Star Tribune introduces us to yet another activity meant to fill that gaping sex void: couples yoga! "Building intimacy was precisely the goal for Michael and Julie Fink of Plymouth," says the paper. "Married for four years, with three young adult children between them, the Finks saw in yoga date night an opportunity to deepen their relationship."

Deepen their relationship? Really? Through playing what's described as an "an adult version of airplane"? I don't mean to disparage this if it truly works for some couples, but are we really so disconnected, physically and emotionally, from our longtime loves that we need to do some bendy faux-Eastern philosophical shit to relate to each other again?

It reminds me of that episode in My So-Called Life, you know, the one where Patty and Graham go ballroom dancing and it starts out horribly and then it makes them all lovey for a little while and Graham decides not to cheat on Patty? But then when the series ends, he's about to boink Hallie Lowenthal anyway? Yeah, that's kind of my point. If your relationship is in trouble, yoga ain't helping. Though it seems like the airplane thing could be fun.

[Image via M.K. Smith]

Tangled Up In You [Star Tribune]

Angela Chase: "When You Call Someone's Name, Like, Kind Of Loud And They Don't Hear You, It Makes You Feel Really Lonely."

Tracie — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:30:00 EDT

Juno was released on DVD today, and as FourFour's Rich brilliantly points out, teenage heroine Angela Chase of My So-Called Life is the anti-Juno. While Juno reveled in her own quirkiness and established individuality — something that is rare, if not nonexistent among teens — Angela dealt with the desperation of "fitting in" and over-thinking every situation in an attempt to try to figure out who the hell she was. Her efforts led to introspective voiceovers that are as hilarious as they are wise: "I thought at least by age 15, I would have a love life. But I don't even have a like life" and "The thought that I might be seeing Jordan Catalano in a few hours was, like, impossible to comprehend. Like when they first tell you about infinity." "It's so weird that teachers actually, like, live places." Clip above.

The Anti-Juno [FourFour]

Literary Ladies Look Thirty Years Younger With The Right Makeover

Jessica — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:30:00 EDT

We always agreed with Angela Chase on My So-Called Life when she described Anne Frank as "lucky." Angela's English teacher asks her, "How could Anne Frank be lucky?" and Angela responds, "'Cause she was stuck in an attic for three years with this guy she really liked." That's the part of Anne Frank that people should be focusing on, not all that dreary, depressing Holocaust and death stuff. This month, Radar Magazine agrees with us, giving the bland, old Anne Frank cover a sexy new makeover! After the jump, check out the other fab makeover Radar gives to Holocaust bummer Sophie's Choice. Sophie might have to choose between her children, but she doesn't have to choose an outdated aesthetic!

Pretty In Pink [Radar]

Angela Chase Always Says Awesome Shit

Slut Machine — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:00:00 EST

When I was a sophomore in high school, and My So-Called Life was on TV, I was way wrapped up in the whole Jordan Catalano romance thing. But it wasn't until I started watching the show again on DVD (the box set, which I highly recommend) that I've gotten really into Angela's voiceovers; they're wonderful. Like this: "Like cheerleaders...Can't people just cheer on their own? To themselves?" Or this: "When Rayanne Graff told me that my hair was holding me back, I had to listen. Because she wasn't just talking about my hair. She was talking about my life." And totally this one, from the clip above: "I cannot bring myself to eat a well balanced meal in front of my mother. It just means too much to her."

Our So-Called Collective Adolescence

Jessica — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:30:43 EDT

When I was in college, I tried writing about how much My So-Called Life meant to me for a non-fiction class. I never handed in the paper because I couldn't manage to express how dreadfully important Angela Chase was to my coming of age without sounding kind of insane or aggressively sentimental. How could I describe the way that Claire Danes's voice would resonate through my head as I walked through the corridors of my suburban public high school (just like Angela!)? That when she said that Anne Frank was "lucky" because she got to be trapped in an attic with the boy she liked, I had thought the same thing? That I dyed my hair manic panic red in the eighth grade because I wanted to be exactly like her?

Good thing The New York Times was able to talk about Angela Chase this weekend without sounding nearly as gushy and obsessive as I do.

In a review of the newly released DVD box set of MSCL, Ginia Bellafante writes:

The series brought us the experience of adolescence outside the bounds of artifice, peril and pathology that had provided the context for nearly every other depiction of teenagers on television. Here what it meant to be 15 was not to discover that you suddenly had to raise your 6-year-old sister or that you might be pregnant with twins but merely that you suffered everyday indignities: overhearing people talk behind your back, the plop of a grim-looking lump of mashed potatoes on a pallid cafeteria tray.

Even more relatable to me than the quotidian humiliations of teendom was that Angela was always struggling between being a good girl and indulging her rebellious side. Unlike the late 90s version of teen sexuality, for instance, American Pie, where if you were "normal" you were having sex, Angela grappled with her decision to stay a virgin in the face of Jordan Catalano's overwhelming hotness. She was legitimately scared to have sex, just as I was for the majority of my high school experience. Though I must say, if there had been anyone nearly as sexy as Jared Leto in my graduating class, my virginity would have been tossed out the window quicker than you can say "where's Tino?"

My identification with Angela Chase was such that Claire Danes's personal life in the intervening years has seriously bummed me out. The Angela Chase... er, Claire Danes I knew would NEVER have fucked someone else's boyfriend, especially not while that someone else was seven months pregnant. In fact, I would go so far as saying that because of her dating foibles and overtly self-conscious obnoxiousness in interviews, ol' crumple face is dead to me. At least Ricky is still awesome.

A Teenager in Love (So-Called) [New York Times]
'My So-Called Life' Lessons — Q&A with Wilson Cruz [Entertainment Weekly]
Capital Danes [Telegraph]