Wednesday, January 7, 2009

They're creepy and they're kooky...

Today marks the 96th anniversary of the birth of famed cartoonist Charles Addams, who gave us The Addams Family: Gomez, Morticia, Lurch, the whole lot. There is a curious link between this franchise and Daria, as Peggy Nicoll (a major Daria screenwriter/staffer and the author of The Daria Database) became a writer for The New Addams Family on TV. The Addams Family (TV show and movies) is referenced a number of times in fanfic. For some reason, dressing up as Morticia Addams is a recurring theme in Halloween stories. Jane dresses up as Morticia in "Daria's Halloween Extravaganza"; Jane refuses to dress up as Morticia in "Trick or Trent." Upchuck is dressed as Morticia in "The Daria Chronicles: Book Learnin'." And, in "Trick or Treat," we have this marvelous exchange about potential Halloween costumes:


Helen: You could have always done Morticia Addams.
Quinn: Why would I want to dress as one of the First Ladies?


Now, that's comedy. Jane as Morticia cries out for fan art.

The alter ego above is a bit like Brittany dressed as Morticia, but it really seems to be Brittany dressed as an opera or musical singer. The pose with the necklace and handkerchief looks familiar, but I cannot place it. Black gowns imply tragedy, but she's smiling. Anyone know more about who Brittany's supposed to be?

[See "Comments" below. JennaUsername, a.k.a. The Dramatic Monarch, figured it out!]

Today is also Saint Distaff's Day. There is no Saint Distaff, which is part of the old joke: it isn't really a holiday, either. It's the day after Epiphany, when medieval women were supposed to start housework again.

A certain fanfic takes place from today through the rest of this month, though it happened four years ago.

ALERT! One of the Ancient Secret Masters of Daria Fandom, A.J., has begun posting mind-blasting secrets from the past on PPMB. Read and be enlightened!

More soon.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hm, I think that Brittany alter-ego was meant to be of Madonna in the "Frozen" music video.

Then again, I could be totally off-base after all this time. :-P

The Angst Guy said...

We have a winner! I'd never seen that video before, but that is definitely it. Brittany is dressed exactly like Madonna, from the MTV music video "Frozen."

Thank you! Jenna wins!

The Angst Guy said...

Here is an interesting post about "Frozen" that tells more about it. No wonder I didn't remember it, as I had dropped out of watching MTV in the late 1990s. Won all sorts of awards. It's actually pretty good, and the music is among Madonna's better stuff. (I dislike most of what she's done, but I can deal with this one just fine.)

Anonymous said...

Interesting on the Addams Family. I wrote my first proto-fanfic on them when I was about 10 or 11 and AF was my favorite TV show. It followed the proven formula of the show, with Gomez and Morticia freaking the mundanes.

Brother Grimace said...

I wish that we could recover someof the old threads from PPMB 1.0. There was some fun stuff posted there.

Brother Grimace said...

I wonder if those threads can be retrieved somehow...

The Angst Guy said...

I've tried. Unless someone backed up the old PPMB threads, it will be difficult. I've had trouble getting them off the WayBack Machine.

Anonymous said...

I love that music video. I'm not a big fan of hers either, but I do like that video (and the song too...it's the only reason I bought that CD!) In fact, I had done a drawing of Andrea dressed like that too, for my Ten Faces of Madonna series. It's old, so the drawing's not that great, but here's a link to it if you're interested:
http://glitterberries.freehostia.com/madonna_andrea.html

The Angst Guy said...

Okay, how it happened that I never saw these drawings before is beyond me, but they are AWESOME!

Thank you, Kem!
:)