Euchre and the Faux Canadian

So I’m from one of the only other places than Alaska in the US that can legitimately call Canada “our neighbors to the south.” Which just means that lots of things that apply to Canadians, also apply to me: calling soda “pop,” funny vowels (Canadian raising if you’re fancy), and the incessant playing of euchre the way I think people in the rest of the country play poker.

I was pretty amused by the Degrassi episode “Queen of Hearts” in which Ellie learns a little something about trusting your partner when she plays in a high stakes euchre game with Alex. Ellie, it seems, is a euchre savant, winning big and making everyone marvel at her skill, but the big win comes when she has to let Alex go it alone.

The problem is (and I gather this is a problem for poker players with tons of plots about the great gamblers), Ellie’s hands are too good to display any real skill on her part. In one hand, someone ELSE called spades and she had both jacks, ace, king, queen. What was the other person calling based on? Crazy!

Sex Bracelets

I just watched the awesomeful season four episodes of Degrassi in which Emma Nelson starts giving head to Jay for jelly bracelets and contracts gonorrhea of the throat. At the end of the episode she has a big showdown with Manny about whether or not it’s ethical for her to kiss the other lead in the school play when you have gonorrhea. But then he tells her there aren’t enough antibiotics to make it ok and that he hopes he didn’t catch it from the kiss the day before. I… am pretty sure you can’t get gonorrhea from kissing.

And I know that Degrassi is hardly a documentary about life today, but the jelly bracelet thing is like, so parental panic. I’m sure that the number of teenagers who have actually done this is in the negative numbers. I remember a few years ago the Altantic Monthly had an article about “rainbow parties” in which teenage girls would don different colors of lipstick before Serenaing the same guy’s Dan, leaving rainbow rings on his throbbing, pulsating manhood. (Which I just think… what precise and tidy blow jobs are these…)

Doostyn informed me that Miriam McDonald, the actress who plays Emma was also in a Lifetime movie, She’s Too Young, about this very issue! (Hilariously, he misremembered the title as 16 and Slutty.) Way to be the face of teen throat gonorrhea, Emma!

The comments on IMDB, btw, are priceless. Among my favorites:

Long story short? No one likes Hannah anymore and she whines about it to geeky-but-adorable-male-photographer-friend over an instant messenger where the screen names are the people’s names and a few numbers. I think I recall ‘grrl’ being in one of them. She later sneaks over to his house, where he reveals a frighteningly stalkerish amount of pictures of her hanging everywhere.

Rather than running away, she leans over and kisses him. They proceed to make out, and she unbuttons her shirt (but is wearing a tank top underneath, because she’s still good somewhere inside!). She straddles him, and goes for his pants, but is stopped by the Moral Speech of the Movie. Such gems as ‘We have the rest of our lives to do this,’ and ‘We don’t even know what we want!’ are dropped. Hannah gets off of him and leaves, but not before screaming the best line of the movie: ‘YOU JUST DON’T LOVE ME BECAUSE I HAVE SYPHILIS!’ She goes to a party, where she is informed that one of her slutty blonde friends is in the basement. Some random sketchy guy proceeds to attempt to rape her, but fails when geeky-but-adorable-yet-prudish-male-photographer-friend-with-benefits steps out of the shadows, brandishing his CAMERA PHONE! He then utters the second-best line of the movie: ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll send this picture straight to 9-1-1.’ Because 9-1-1 has text messaging services.

The moral of the movie? Peer pressure gives you syphilis, and would-be rapists can be deterred by absolute nonsense. 8/10.

And then this gem:

If this is supposed to be a somewhat educational film, then someone should have informed LifeTime that syphilis is a bacteria NOT A VIRUS. When the nurse was vaccinating the students she kept telling them the shot would cure their virus. Way to teach kids about STD’s.

I wish these things were on Lifetime when I’m at my parents, all I ever get to see are dumbshit wedding shows.