What Do You Think of Tiny Swim Suit Attire for High School Car Wash Fundraisers?

Apparently, those Northgate kids were at it again Sunday, doing a car wash fundraiser in their tiny swim suits.

The blog Claycord reports that the young gentlemen of the water polo team at Walnut Creek's Northgate High were donning Speedos and maybe little else while standing at a busy corner in central Contra Costa County, holding signs and trying to lure motorists into a gas station to have their cars washed.

The issue of high school students and their so-called bikini car wash fundraisers, exploded on the local blogosphere last September. This includes on Crazy in Suburbia. It all started on an early September weekend in 2009 when the blogger Mister Writer and other witnesses spotted Northgate High cheerleaders, in string tops and "tight" shorts that barely covered their buttocks, holding a car wash fundraiser at a gas station at Ygnacio Valley Road and Civic Drive in Walnut Creek.

The blogger Mister Writer said the scantily clad girls were "waving signs" to advertise their fundraiser.

A few weeks later, members of the Northgate water polo team were out at the same Walnut Creek intersection--some in Speedos.

Much debate ensued on the Crazy in Suburbia, Claycord, and Mister Writer message boards--about the appropriateness of kids showing a bit of flesh while doing their fundraisers.

Some readers were horrified at young people exploiting their bodies in such ways. Other readers accused us bloggers of being grumpy farts who should just give these kids a break. These students are young, health, in shape and should feel no shame about their bodies. Also, readers said, these car washes happen to fall on particularly warm afternoons. For students, stripping down to their bikini tops, short shorts or Speedos was a way to keep cool.

Last year, after the first bikini car wash hit the blogosphere ("High school girls gone Lolita (?) at Walnut Creek car wash"), I contacted Northgate High Principal John McMorris.

He told me that students at school fundraisers must adhere to a dress code--"shorts, shirt, etc." I didn't think he was talking about bikini tops, short shorts and Speedos.

What was interesting about presenting this debate was soon learning that the bikini car wash fundraiser is something of a phenomenon in contemporary suburban culture. Enough that the hit musical TV show Glee had fun with the phenomenon by featuring a song and dance number, set at a car wash fundraiser for the fictional McKinley High Shool Glee Club. And, yes, cheerleaders were involved. And, yes, the cheerleaders were in their bikini tops and short little skirts.

The Real Housewives of Walnut Creek? Why not, now that Walnut Creek has its own TV channel?

Walnut Creek residents will start to enjoy even more local, original programming than just live coverage of City Council and Planning Commission meetings, thanks to the city assuming more responsibility for its government access channel.

“Producing our government access channel gives us another way to engage the community. People can know what’s going on in Walnut Creek just by turning on their television,” City Manager Gary Pokorny told the January/February issue of In the Nutshell.

So, the new WCTV, as the channel is called, will also feature coverage of local arts classes and programs and special events, from a Civic Arts Education class, to a segment on the Holiday Tree lighting, to peeks at what’s going on behind the scenes at the Lesher Center. Oh, and very useful: it will broadcast local weather and traffic news and “How To” features on such tasks as taking out a building permit to property pruning trees.

Sounds great.

But, hmm, why should the city stop with tips on getting building permits? Why not take a cue from successful network and cable shows and devise the kind of entertaining fare that could put Walnut Creek on the national cultural radar! Come on! We have some creative, talented people in town! Hey, let's put on a show! Here are some of my thoughts on potential shows. If you have any of your own…

--Walnut Creek Idol? Yeah, I know some other local groups and towns around here have already jumped on this bandwagon and produced their own Idol-inspired programs. But, from what I’ve heard of those events, they are all—shall we say?—a bit sugar-coated. What we would absolutely need is a judge with some Simon Cowell snark. Any ideas on local personalities who could fit this requirement?

--Glee Walnut Creek: This should be easy. No doubt, there’s lots of musical theater talent among the students at Northgate and Las Lomas high schools. And just to expand the talent pool, we could let some of those song-and-dance kids from Acalanes in, as well as De La Salle and Carondelet. We could also do some episodes where our Glee kids get to work in local productions at the Lesher Center, and directors, actors ,and designers from Center Repertory Company, Contra Costa Musical Theatre, and Diablo Theatre Company could make guest appearances.

--Okay, we need a cop procedural. CSI: Walnut Creek seems a bit too obvious. But maybe I’m missing something.

--We in Walnut Creek could do medical drama really well. After all, we are hospital central for this part of Contra Costa. Why don’t we revive the concept of the SF-based show Trauma (whose future with NBC is questionable) and set it at, yes, John Muir Medical Center? Gunshot victims from Richmond. Binge-drinking teens. One of our “residentially challenged” citizens gone off his meds. (Or a Soccer Mom gone off her meds?) Ice skating mishaps.

A swine flu outbreak puts Walnut Creek in quarantine! Yes, this is all dark stuff. But ultimately what would really drive interest in the show would be the outside-the-ER soap operatic escapades of a hot young staff of residents and nurses, and the ego-driven machinations of hospital administrators and the fictional chief of emergency services.

--Parks and Recreation Walnut Creek: Our version of the NBC show starring Amy Poehler. This is a no brainer.

--Gone to Pot: That’s my working title for what could be an Office-like, documentary-style comedy set not in the cubicle-land of a Shadeslands office park company, but among the staff at the C3 Collective medical marijuana dispensary. There is the potential for some Harold and Kumar-esque stoner comedy, as well as C3 staff’s funny run-ins with straight-laced representatives from the city, the Chamber of Commerce and the police department. More comic relief could come from zingers lobbed by a straight-talking Rossmoor granny who is one of C3’s regular customers.

--Perhaps most importantly, if we’re looking for Emmys to rain down on Walnut Creek, we need to create a quality, scripted drama a la HBO, Showtime, AMC, and FX. Don’t know if Walnut Creek has the socio-economic, demographic profile to seriously consider our own version of The Sopranos or The Wire.

But we could possibly do a Breaking Bad. There might be an underpaid chemistry teacher at one of our local high schools who needs to do some “cooking” to earn some extra cash.

Better yet: Why don’t we update the Mad Men concept to Walnut Creek 2010.

We could provide the gender equity missing from Mad Men's Sterling Cooper, and call our show Mad Women. And, we won’t set our show in an advertising agency trying to hawk products to give 1960s consumers the illusion that they are purchasing their piece of the American dream.

We will set our Mad Women in a real estate agency, and our protagonist will be Sally Draper all growed up (the effed-up daughter of Mad Men’s Don Draper), and she’s having her own existential crisis as she tries to sell prospective suburban home buyers on the delusion that to enjoy their own piece of the American dream they really need a two-story foyer, a master suite with fireplace, imported granite kitchen countertops and a separate prep sink. Of course, her clients can't really afford these things, because they already have massive credit card debt and hubby’s company is in downsizing mode.

--Finally, don't you think our local TV station needs its own Glenn Beck? Some charismatic demagogue, spouting nutsy, wildly contrived paranoid conspiracy theories, and giving voice to the discontented and alienated amongst us?

"Glee" offers reasons for why we should support arts in our schools

Okay, so I'm in serious good TV withdrawal. Mad Men finished up its third season a few weeks ago, and now Glee has wound up its "fall season," so there will be no new episodes ... until the spring!

In the January issue of Vanity Fair, contributing editor James Wolcott offers his take on the wonderfulness of this high school musical infused with the wicked comic sensibility of Heathers and Mean Girls:

Glee, a show that restored our faith in the power of song, the beauty of dance, and the magic of “spirit fingers” to chase our cares and woes into somebody else’s backyard ... Following a successful test launch of its pilot episode last summer, Glee has accelerated into the critical/popular hit debut series of the 2009 television season, a rocking confection that has achieved the wondrous feat of making musical theater look hip, mainstream, and sexily redemptive, empowering theater queens of every age, race, creed, sexual orientation, and landmass shape to embrace their inner “Liza with a Z” and let the sequins fall where they may. Let none dare call them sissy.

I'll second that.

Wolcott ends his piece by noting the unhappy irony of the show, hitting the small screen at this particular time:

The unhappy irony is that, while Glee is hitting the heights, school arts funding is being slashed across the country due to the steep recession and declining tax revenues. To the bottom-line mentalities that make policy, the arts are still considered frilly extras, a myopic view that—oh, forget it. I don’t want to end this column on a downer. Five minutes ago, I was feeling so cheerful, and then I had to go introduce the real world into the discussion, like an idiot. Better I should go on singing in the rain, the way God and Gene Kelly and MGM intended.

"Glee" tackles the highly controversial issue (at least in Walnut Creek) of high school carwash fundraisers--with girls donning bikini tops!

The fictional McKinley High Glee Club of our new fave TV show, Glee, tries to raise big bucks to hire a professional choreographer to help them make their song-and-dance routines more polished. So, how do these Glee kids go about raising money? They turn to the classic carwash fundraiser (as pictured above!). And, like some carwash kids raising money recently for a certain local high school's cheerleading squad, the cheerleader members of the McKinley High Glee Club decide to strip off their shirts and don bikini tops. You know, to keep things cool on a hot, hot day.

Thing get fun when this event turns into another excuse for one of Glee's quirkily conceived but utterly delightful--and kinda sexy--musical numbers (Again, pictured above). Mercedes, the girl with the Aretha Franklin pipes (played by Amber Riley), feels rejected when the object of her affections, Kurt, proclaims--falsely, 'cause he's gay--that he has a crush on another girl. She hurls a rock into the windshield of his SUV, then busts out a dream-sequence rendition of Jazmine Sullivan’s “Bust Your Windows" in the middle of the parking lot. Her song of anger and rejection is accompanied by back-up dancers in the form of cheerleaders in bikini tops and little skirts.

Go Glee! And check out the number yourself here.

Jumping on the Glee bandwagon: a show for suburban high school "losers" like me

Why are my son and I, so far, glee-ful about the new Fox TV high school dramedy, Glee?

This new series follows an idealistic teacher, Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), "who--against all odds and a malicious cheerleading coach--attempts to save McKinley High's Glee Club from obscurity, while helping a group of aspiring underdogs realize their true star potential."

Oh, let me think of all the ways we love Glee:

--Given my ongoing examination of the dark, crazy side of contemporary American suburban life, this show smartly and wickedly picks apart our favorite suburban and public high school archetypes, aspirations, and symbols of success and failure. As Salon.com critic Heather Havrilesky wrote: "Every second of Glee is packed with tasty commentary on the absurdities of suburban American life.

--The show has style, flair, and great musical numbers. There is something fabulously entertaining about watching these teen characters--insecure, awkward, dorky--pulling off badly choreographed but ultimately hip-shaking, bad-ass school choir versions of Kanye West's "Golddigger" and Salt-n-Peppa's pelvis-grinding "Push It."

--And, by the way, any show that showcases the genius of hip-hop gal trio Salt-n-Pepa gets a big thumbs up from me. I hope we'll be getting McKinley High Glee Club versions of "Shoop," "Whatta Man," and "None of Your Business."

--Did I say the show is smart and wicked? Yeah I did, but it's worth repeating: "Deliciously mean-spirted behind its 'Up with People facade," as Havrilesky wrote. Glee moves with the breakneck speed, sprinkled with the sly asides, of a good farce. For my son and me, Glee ranks up there with our other favorite comedies about suburban dysfunction: the live-action shows, Malcolm in the Middle and Arrested Development, and the animated shows, The Simpsons and The Family Guy. By the way, all those shows are also Fox network products.

--Yeah, Glee is subservive. Last Wednesday, we got to witness a meeting of the McKinley High Celibacy Club, led by perky, bitchy head cheerleader Quinn whose motto is: "It's all about the teasing and not about the pleasing!"

The meeting ends with Rachel Berry, the Glee Club's smart, ambitious diva declaring that all this abstinence stuff is silly (You hear that, Sarah and Bristol Palin?). She proclaims that teens should be given information and access to contraception, and--maybe most shocking of all--that girls like sex, too! Well, this declaration certainly grabs the attention of popular quarterback Finn Hudson, who happens to be Quinn's boyfriend and who has joined the Glee Club because he also happens to be a talented singer and really wants to express himself, too. And, he's making goo-goo eyes at Rachel.

--Jane Lynch is brilliant as Sue Sylvester, the malicious coach of the Cheerios, the cheerleading squad, who makes it her No. 1 mission to destroy the Glee Club.

--One of the co-creators is Ryan Murphy of Nip/Tuck fame. In an interview with Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, he said he loves his "loser" characters and wanted, ultimately, to create a series that depicts kids putting everything they've got into doing something they love.

--So for all its caustic humor and not-so-clean fun, the show has a sweetness to it, a heart, and some of that "Don't Stop Believin' " faith that, yeah, great things are possible.