Stephanie March: Superhero (and My Studying Woes)

Stephanie March as herself 

Stephanie March as Alex Cabot

I'm deadly tired after studying independently  from 5:30 a.m. until 9:00 a.m. class, studying through lunch break, rushing of to an orthopedic surgeon's appointment, studying in the waiting room before being called back to an exam room, studying until the orthopedist made her appearance in the exam room, and then rushing off to a group study session which lasted until 10:50:. My brain feels as though it is in danger of imploding, but I have two midterms this week, and both are high-stakes exams on which I must do well. 

The problem with a pass/fail system is that one knows that he or she passed (unless one is among the unlucky minority) but one never really knows if he or she really scored high enough. This non-ranking for underclassmen at my school in many ways makes the ranking all the more insidious. Non-ranking is b.s. Everyone knows we're ranked.. It's not official, but everyone keeps track, and God help anyone who finds himself or herself in the bottom third of the heap;. Maintenance of rankings or not, we ALL ("we" meaning students and professors alike) now exactly where we fall on concrete test scoring before, on, and after each exam. No one is fooling anyone. The non-ranking system is an exercise in futility. All it accomplishes is to keep achievers such as myself from ever knowing if we;ve studied enough. Much  of the problem lies in the rankings that exist in professors' minds. These are every bit as real as test scores. 

If rankings were official, open,  and based on tangible criteria, worrying about what is going on in the minds of professors wouldn't be a legitimate issue. Yes, we all desire to be thought highly of by them, but the bottom line would be the rankings. With there being no such things as rankings in our  flimsy pass/fail system. what is happening in the minds of those professors is terribly important. I can hope that professors' impressions are heavily based on test scores, lecture participation, Practice of Medicine performance (in addition to tests) and other  definitive and perceptible measures, but it's entirely too arbitrary as it stands. If I'd had it to do over, I might have chosen to attend a school without a pass/fail and a non-ranking system for the first two years, but i am here   and instead to stick it out.

I've ranted enough, however, about my plight. i'm lucky enough to have been admitted to a prestigious medical school, and I'm fortunate enough, at least as appearances would seem to indicate, to be thriving if not at least succeeding at said institution. It is time to speak of more pressing matters. I wish to write at this time about actress and activist Stephanie March, and the positive impact her career and inspiration have had on my own life.. Ms. March,  a talented actress who portrayed (and still portrays, I think,  although I rarely have time to watch) an ADA and/or bureau chief  on Law and Order SVU,  She has also worked on Broadway and in movies. She's a major philanthropist, if that is a correct reference for someone who devotes massive amounts of her time and anot insificant amoutn of personal funds  both for the raising of money and for good works to benefit those less fortunate than herself and than most of us, and who often don't have much of a voice in the world. Ms. March's acts are so truly selfless that if I could someday find a way to devote a fraction of the time that she does to improve the quality of the lives of others, I would consider that I had just cause to feel very proud of what i had done and/or was doing.

I became acquainted with Ms. March's career through watching Law and Order SVU at an age probably younger than i should have been allowed to watch the program. The program reportedly first aired in September of 1999. I wasn't quite five years old yet, so even with my parents' somewhat lax standards,  I was not watching the program at that point, although I occasionally caught a glimpse through the banister rails if I had reason to get up after my parents had put us to bed and were watching their post-kiddie nighttime TV faire. I probably caught it on the sly, such as when someone had DVRed the program and wasn't noticing if I watched snippets of the recordings on the sly when I was maybe eight. I was precocious and could handle most of what I saw. There was enough material in my actual life to fuel nightmares that the L &O sVU content did little or nothing to add to my state of paranoia. If anything, it only made me wary of things of which I should have been wary. When I was involved in a potential online predator situation, it was content that I'd seen on Law & Order SVU that alerted me to the danger of my own situation and gave me the knowledge that it was time to inform a responsible adult of my predicament.

My first impressions of Ms. March as ADA Alexandra Cabot were somewhat neutral. She was most certainly a kick-@$$ ADA, and I liked that about her, as well as the brains the writers gave the character. Screenwriters are not miracle workers, and presumably cannot endow an idiot with faux intelligence and have it actually play as credible. I would presume that Ms. March must possess considerable intelligence to have played and continue to play a character of such intelligence and depth. What was most noticeable to me at first about Ms. March (as Alexandra Cabot) 's physical appearance was her rather imposing glasses. it took awhile to see, beyond the glasses, just how beautiful she was and is.

It was at this point that I acquired the ambition to become the  next real-life ADA Alex Cabot. I watched every repeat episode i could DVD and watch, working hard to get around my parents' weekday one-hour  (and weekend two-hour) TV-time limit in order to catch up on as much Judge Alex cases and L&O SVU  reruns. When I was sick or injured and had access to additional TV time, i also watched a bit of Judge Judy and The People's Court with Judge Marilyn Milian, but both of those programs were a distinct second-place to Judge Alex and Alex Cabot.

At some point during this part of my life, my aunt entered law school. I spent summers with her and had access to her law school textbooks, which I read voraciously. i memorized case law right along with some of ADA Cabot's more memorable lines. One of my all-time favorites was, "You've offered a provocative theory. What it lacks in substance, it makes up for in pretty colors," along with "He wouldn't be a single parent if he hadn't killed his wife," and "Petrovsky acted like I just killed her dog." My peers probably found me a bit strange in citing case law and quoting Alex Cabot, but they were so busy quoting Justin Timberlake's and the Bieb's lyrics that they had little room to criticize me. My parents, i'm sure, thought it was a phase through I would eventually emerge.

It very nearly ending up not being a passing phase. I enrolled in university at 16-and-a-half as an English major with pre-law emphasis. It was only after speaking with several unemployed bar-member attorneys and several public defenders and assistant district attorneys who were living paycheck to paycheck (my undergraduate university was in a high cost-of-living community) that I began to consider what my father said about my English major being perhaps a waste of mathematical and scientific aptitude,  I switched gears to a biochemistry major, having fortunately taken several AP courses in high school that would apply, and having taken some pertinent electives in my first year as well. I tacked a violin performance major onto my exiting piano performance major and biochem major because an counselor told me such would be an ace-in-the-hole in terms of medical school admission as long as GPA and MCAT scores were high.

It's now clear that I will not emulate Alex Cabot professionally. I will still strive, however, to someday be a fraction of the human being Stephanie March is. It will have to wait for the completion of medical school, internship, residency, and fellowships. Still, it's a goal for which I can strive.

Stephanie March is going through what would appear to be a most difficult time in her personal life. Her personal life is absolutely none of my business, but still, I hope she weathers the storm and comes out at least as strong as she was before if not stronger. She deserves everything kind that life has to offer.

While both celebrities and real-life people we all know possess the same foibles and fight the same battles the rest of us do, heroes and heroines exist in real life. Stephanie March is one of them. Consult Wikipedia or any number of other available online sites to learn of ms. March's specific charitable causes and how you, too, can help if you so desire.

The Food Network: My On-Again / Off-Again Relationship

I used to be addicted to the programming on Food Network. During my lengthy recovery time from my multiple fractures, related surgeries, and kidney infection a year or so ago, my television viewing time was not restricted. Normally at home my brother and I are limited to an hour a day on school days and two hours a day on non-school days, but since I couldn't even hold a book and turn the pages by myself during my recovery, the Nazis who call themselves my parents lifted a few of their draconian restrictions.

Bobby Flay was one of the featured stars of Food Network whose programming I watched. He was, and presumably still is, on "Grill It," which usually showed him cooking some food on the grill or watching an inferior amateur do the cooking. When the amateur cooks, he or she usually breaks at least one of Bobby Flay's cardinal rules of grilling, i.e. "put it on the grill and don't mess with it" or "don't ever use lighter fluid unless you want your food to taste like lighter fluid." Flay is gracious and keeps his mouth shut when his guests massacre food. On "Throwdown," Flay travels to compete against professionals or gifted amateurs who specialize in a particular food. Surprisingly, the competitors are often even more obnoxious than Bobby Flay. My suspicion is that the real purpose of "Throwdown" is to show the viewing public that there are people on the planet who are less likable than Bobby Flay. Flay also competes on Iron Chef America, helps to manage the competition on "The Next Food network Star," and appears on repeat episodes of "Boy Meets Grill." Grilling is Bobby Flay's signature method of cooking. If he were asked to prepare a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he would grill it, but only after liberally spicing it up with cilantro and chipotle, which he would pronounce chip - POH- tuh - lay; he always adds an extra schwa syllable when saying the word chipotle.

The show I probably enjoyed watching the most, primarily because of the sheer horror masquerading as food on a daily basis, was "Semi-Homemade." Its star, Sandra Lee, had a great rags-to-riches story, and is truly a shining example of self-sufficiency . . . that is, until it comes to cooking. Yet she hosted a cooking show on Food Network. I find the irony most uncanny. The premise of her show is cooking with seventy percent pre-packaged ingredients and thirty percent ingredients fresh or from scratch. The color scheme in Sandra Lee's set kitchen changes for each episode, and she dresses to match the kitchen. I've known some vapid individuals in my lifetime (my brother has dated approximately twenty-three cheerleaders, only two of whom could string a sentence together if two million dollars were wagered on it) but dressing to match one's kitchen out-vapids the most vapid cheerleader (even the one who worked part-time at a bank and gave away travelers cheques without requiring the customer to pay the face value of the traveler's cheques because the customer had a premium account that offered "free" traveler's cheques; this was a couple of years ago; I don't think traveler's cheques exist anymore) ever dated by my brother. Sandra Lee hasn't been on when I've channel-surfed to the Food Network lately. I heard she's in a semi-serious relationship with the governor of New York. I hope he has his own chef that comes with his position so that he doesn't have to eat semi-homemade cooking. If Sandra Lee had to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from scratch, I don't think she could manage it. Either the peanut butter and the jelly would have to be purchased mixed together in the jar, or the bread would need to be pre-sliced diagonally, or perhaps a knife would have to be pre-coated with the peanut butter/jelly mixture.

Another Food Network star is Paula Deen. Paula Deen is the reigning southern belle of the Food Network. If Scarlett O'Hara had been a real person and not a fictional character, her accent could not have come close to Paula Deen's in terms the intensity of her drawl. Paula Deen uses LOTS of butter in everything she cooks. I've heard rumors that her low-density-lipid levels, and those of her second husband, Michael Groover, are virtually off the charts. There was another husband -- Mr. Deen -- who is supposedly divorced from Paula and living elsewhere. I don't believe what they say about Mr. Deen. I think he's six feet under. Paula killed him off with a heart attack by serving him butter as a main course for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. If Paula Deen made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she would add so much actual butter to the sandwich that one would be able to taste neither the peanut butter nor the jelly.

Almost evertime I surf past Food Network now, I see Guy Fieri's face prominently displayed. Fieri was the winner of (I think) season two of "The Next Food Network Star." It seems like his orignial show was "Guy Fieri's Big Bite." It may or may not still be on, but he seems to be on a host of other programs as well, most notably "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." Fieri is a somewhat sloppy and larger-than-life guy with bleached spiky hair. If Guy Fieri made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it would probably be a perfectly normal sandwich, but I'd be scared to take a bite because I would suspect he forgot to wash his hands before he made it.

Rachael Ray is a hard-working and enterprising woman who somehow manages to be both likable and annoying at the same time. Ms. Ray has moved beyond the Food Network to a daytime talk show but, as far as I know, continues to film episodes of "30-Minute Meals." Unfortunately, the food usually looks like it was thrown together in three minutes or less. It might actually be fairly tasty for all I know, but it usually looks too mixed-together for my tastes. Call me OCD if you wish, but I don't like my food to touch. Rachael Ray's food always touches. If Rachael Ray made a peanut butter sandwich, she would probably liberally douse the bread with extra-virgin olive oil, which she would (DUH!) call EVOO. The sandwich, which Ms. Ray would refer to as a "sammy," would be prepared in one minute so that she could spend her remaining twenty-nine minutes concocting some meaty hash or something which she would serve on the same plate -- actually touching -- the otherwise edible peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Giada DeLourentis is a talented if slightly "precious" (thank you, Stephanie March, for the apt description, even though you would never in a million years admit that it was she to whom you made reference on Rachael Ray's talk show) chef who was born in Italy but has spent most of her life in the U. S. Nevertheless, she clings to the accent, particularly when pronouncing foods with Italian names. I don't expect her to speak in the manner of a ditch bank Okie, but the way she stretches out "parmigiano reggiano" is just a little too, well, precious. Based on observations, I would conclude that, Cordon Bleu-trained or not, Ms. DeLourentis is incapable of cooking without simultaneously displaying cleavage. If Ms. DeLourentis made a peanut butter sandwich, which would, I'm fairly certain, be made on ciabatta bread, every hormonal heterosexual male on the planet would want to watch her as she made it.

Alton Brown wouldn't actually make the sandwich, but he'd tell you all sorts of interesting scientific facts about peanut butter, jelly, and sandwiches in general. Alton Brown is my favorite on Food Network. Ina Garten, AKA "The Barefoot Contessa," would make lots of little sandwiches, PBJ or otherwise, for one of her little hoity-toity fake dinner parties, but she'd have to think long and hard before making one or doing anything else for a child through the "Make a Wish" Foundation. The Neeleys might manage to get a sandwich on a plate in the midst of their televised verbal love-making session.

The opinions expressed in this review of Food Network programming are just that -- opinions -- and as such are unimpeachable, or at least I think they are. Please don't sue me, Food Network. I'm not half as brutal as are the people who post on the "Television Without Pity" message boards. If you want to read some real snark about the Food Network, go there.