Happy Election Day!

In the days leading up to the momentous election occurring today, I transported myself back in time to the good ol' days of the founding fathers. By which I mean I finally got around to watching all 501 minutes (about 8 ½ hours) of "John Adams", the acclaimed miniseries starring Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.

I have always had a soft spot for Adams since visiting Adams National Historic Park with my family a few years ago. It's a really great site, on par with some of the best presidential libraries, though it's not an official presidential library since it's not run by the National Archives and Record Administration. But you do get to see a really cool library that belonged to John Quincy Adams. It's entirely fireproof and has so many books. It was probably my favorite part of the tour.

By the way, from a non-partisan perspective, we can't really go wrong in this election in terms of the presidential library situation. If we had a Barack Obama library, than Illinois would have a great two-fer in terms of Lincoln and Obama. And we badly need more presidential sites in the western states. California does its part but something in Arizona would really liven up vacations for those of us who like going to these types of things. So that's a win-win! But as most people know, I am not non-partisan.

Anyways, back to John Adams. I thought watching the miniseries at this point of the year would provide a good reprieve from the election news, which has been driving me crazy. And frankly, John Adams was lucky to be around in a YouTube-less age. For example, he seemed like kind of a big crybaby. He was frequently grumpy. He was kind of an ass to everyone that he thought was wrong. His speeches would have been criticized as elitist and emotionless. He was not very attractive. He had a very spunky wife who likely would have said something that would have been taken out of context and criticized. On the plus side, he did have adorable children that would give the Obama girls and Piper Palin runs for their money, but unfortunately he treated them kinda badly and would have likely gotten into the kind of snafu that Giuliani got into when his kids wouldn't campaign with him. John Adams was not a very good dad.

What does everybody think about wigs? Sometimes while watching this miniseries I was pro-wig, especially the look that was a few tight horizontal curls right above the ear, while other times I was vehemently anti-wig. I'm a flip-flopper like that. But one thing I can get behind is carrying around a walking stick all the time and banging it on the floor to demonstrate approval or disgust. People were real into that in the olden days, apparently. Also, bonnets. We should bring back bonnets.

So bonnets + walking stick = win. But here were the things from John Adams' day that I didn't like. First up, tarring and feathering. That seems bad. But I will say that I might hold undue prejudice against this one because I got all excited about the HBO advisory that warned me that there would be "brief nudity" in this episode. I figured this translated into John and Abigail getting it on. But as it was, a naked guy got tarred and feathered. I didn't enjoy that. I also didn't enjoy watching the Adams family get smallpox vaccines or the guy who had smallpox. Similarly hard to watch: amputation and a primitive mastectomy.

The most interesting character of all to me was Thomas Jefferson. When we meet Thomas Jefferson, he's a moody writer who has to sit by while Ben Franklin and John Adams mess up his carefully chosen words. It's a hard ordeal for any writer, which is why I think Jefferson might have liked blogging. No editor can touch you there. Unless your editor leaves comments on your blog. HELLO KATIE.

Well, after hearing his historic but mangled words read aloud, Jefferson disappears until one of the best segments of the series, which is when Adams is in Paris. Then he reappears for some crazy sexual tension with Abigail Adams. Also, Ben Franklin, deep into his crazy coonskin hat days, is also running around. At first, it seemed to me that Ben Franklin would have been awesome to be friends with, because he ran around saying funny and wise things all the time. But I guess I would eventually find that annoying, as John Adams seemed to do; Adams was also generally annoyed that history would remember Franklin more fondly than it remembered him. That's a concern he had about most people. I guess it was hard to be a Founding Father. Because in addition to Franklin and Jefferson, you also had the dashing heartthrob and flashy dresser George Washington running around.

John Adams spends a lot of time getting down on himself. Despite thinking he is always right, he pretty much always thinks he failed as well. He always felt screwed over, which is not a particularly attractive quality in a politician and leader or anybody I guess. And frankly he made some bad decisions, particularly in terms of his children. Would we elect him president today? Probably not.

Anyways, if you want to watch a miniseries that has weird parallels and references to things that happen in politics today, you should watch this miniseries. You should also just watch the miniseries if you want to be entertained for 501 minutes, because I know I certainly was. Though don't watch this miniseries for a happy ending because pretty much everybody dies….hope I'm not giving anything away there. Though if you do watch to the end, you get this little nugget of a quote from elderly John Adams: "I can no longer bear this ennui, Abigail!" I'm going to try to throw it into conversation more often. Even if no one nearby is named Abigail.