Poking head: JZ! You're still here?

Do NOT taunt me about the absence of halogen torchiers on the market.

Not everyone likes lamps that tend to start fires.

Happy Birthday, Tom Scola! May this be a great year for you.

Birthday, Happy to Tom.

My body and brain are mad at me for going along with Daylight Savings Time. That's it. No more. I will stay at EST+1 for the rest of my life.

Stupid 47-hour weekend.

Snarl.

Nilly! Sort of. I spent the entire weekend sleeping like a dead thing. The only productive thing I managed, really, was to do a lot of dishes, but since I was also the one who dirtied a lot of them, really I just maintained dish stasis. I meant to do laundry, as the laundry pile is now up to my knees, but every time I planned to it started raining and I got discouraged at the thought of lugging giant laundry bags a block away in the rain, and I took a nap instead.

The only other event of note is that yesterday I ran into a couple I know from the RenFaire at church, and just as I was about to start chatting I got hit by a wave of exhausted-plus-queasy and had to make a quick excuse and bolt away to go sit in my car and try very hard not to throw up. They looked very confused as I left. I should probably send the girl an email to explain that I'm neither crazy nor repulsed by them, and please don't judge me by the haste with which I fled.

Thus endeth the tale of my weekend.

Happy Birthday, Tom!!

Happy Birthday Tom!

I'm so mad! NBC is switching Heist and L&O. Now, I have to miss Heist because I know I can't miss Lost or VM. . . this isn't the week that VM moves to Tuesdays, is it?

Sort of.

I hope this won't exhaust or put you straight to sleep, then. I translated for you (and for practice) the "My So Called thirtysomething" thing I told you about upthread:

- It just seems like, you're agreed to have a certain personality, or something, for no reason -- just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know if it's even you?

I didn't die my hair in highschool, definitely not in crimson glow. I was never in love with the most handsome boy in school, with the guitar and the car and the meaningful silences. I never built any distance from an old friend in favor of the wild girl, and I was never blind to the secret love of the neighbor boy (because nobody was ever secretly in love with me). I was different from Angela Chase in almost every way possible, and still, those were my so called life. Or, at least, that's how I felt.

And it was the first time in which a tv show made me feel such identification. As a little girl, the stories I was looking for were as far as possible from the routine, known too-well daily life. Distant worlds, magics, monsters and knights filled my imagination, as well as historical epics from all over the world, exciting discoveries and breath-taking adventures. Not just on tv, but also in book, as well as in any other imaginary outlet I could find, away from the world around me. I was looking for the different, the unfamiliar, the fascinating and exciting. I've hardly ever read any books which depicted the lives of children like me, with all the tiring details of their days, and I definitely didn't want to watch such movies or tv shows. I knew this world from my own daily life. I didn't need any story to depict it for me.

But a few years and book-cases for older children in the library later (as much as the strict librarians permitted, and sometimes even under their noses), I started to discover between the bindings and the pages the magic that is hidden in the description of the everyday life. The written word penetrated into the depths of the inner worlds of the characters, in a direct and immediate description, until I felt that I myself was inside their skin. The tapestry was sensitively woven, the focus shifted from the technical details to the emotions of the characters, their thoughts and conflicts. The word “familiar” had more meaning than the simplistic “been there done that”, but rather the much richer and deeper meaning of “am I not the only one who feels this way? How can you describe so accurately what goes on in my head and inside my guts?”

In tv it took longer. As a little girl, it seemed like there are two kinds of shows: the ones with the heroes who have unusual life, like in the adventure storybooks, and the ones which presented the everyday life, and were mostly educational and explained why you're not supposed to drink alcohol, not believe in yourself, lie to your parents and not tell the truth. In each and every story about a world I knew, I felt like I was also told how this world should be conducted and look.

Even later, when it was OK to stay up until the late hours of the night and watch the “grownups” shows, what seemed to be describing people who leave in an ordinary world, actually wasn't: cops (who catch criminals, even murderers, on a daily basis), lawyers (who change the lives of the people that the cops from the previous shows caught, without blinking), or doctors (whose effect on their patients lives is even bigger than that of the former two). Under the disguise of undecorated reality, the lives that were presented were even less ordinary than those of the crinolines-wearing, swords-yielding or conquerers of barren lands.

- And I mean this whole thing with yearbook, it's like ... if you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book -- you know, in my humble opinion.

(continued...)

( continues...) The distance of fiction from the dull routine isn't surprising. It was Hitchcock who already said that “Drama is like without the boring parts”. But what if it's possible to take those moment, which seem to dull and familiar, the same moments that we experienced every day, talked about with the people around us, knew well, the moments that had nothing new for us, and turn them into the heart of the matter? To find the seed of magic in the midst of the routine? For me, this contradiction is what made “My So Called Life” and later “thirtysomething” into one of the most exciting adventures of all.

The “me” whose so-called-life we see is Angela Chase, a highschool student in a typical American suburb. The show followed her schoolmates – especially the wild Rayanne, the golden-hearted Rickie, the 'good girl' Sharon and the straight-A student Brian – as well as her family members – her strict and worrying mother, her warm and agreeable father and her younger sister – and a gallery of other characters, which go in and out of the life of every girl, such as teachers, grandparents, uncles, business partners of the adults, other students in school, and one Jordan Catalano, the subject of an intense crush. Relationships are growing and developing, sometimes between the most unexpected characters, and insights, for both young and grownups, float and crystallize as a result of the simple daily events and the emotions that accompany them.

It seems like a recipe that's been cooked an infinite number of times already in various teen shows. But actually the show was the complete opposite. One difference lied in its point of view. It didn't try to educate the teenagers who appeared in it or watched it, and didn't push to state a message. It didn't judge the characters or their actions. Rather, it tried to mirror, as clearly as possible, real people, who react in a believable matter on actual events which an happen in the lives of nearly anybody.

Even though the little details were the focus, they were just the trigger, the means to observing the deeper meaning that resides in each of these seemingly-regular events, a meaning that so often its own simplicity and directness are what led it on, beyond the mundane, that which we are sometimes so close to it that we can't see clearly. The deep emotions that are exposed through the petty routine, the meanings beyond the gestures, the questions that actually bother all of us, that sharply float through the imaginary characters – all that find the interest and importance in the details that may be considered negligible.

In contrast with the adventure books, the show had no victory of good over evil, no forces of darkness against those of light. There were only people. Trying to do the best they can, in the various life fields, succeeding sometimes, failing sometimes, whining sometimes (on the failures as well as – in a very human way – of the successes), get hurt, forgive, talk about it (or keep it bottled up) and try to do better on the next round. The processes were slow, gradual, built in stages and lean on past developments.

The characters were also real. Just like people, even though they could be described in a couple of words, just like I did above, this sort of description is lacking and pale. Just like in life, there are no “good” or “bad” characters. They all have their advantages and their weaknesses, interwoven in each other. I could support one of them in one storyline, be against them in another, and in repeat viewing contradict my former positions. Moreover, the characters don't forget the lessons of past events, and even try to use them, or at least acknowledge them later on. A superficial description of the characters is not just lacking, but each character goes through a process, grows, changes, develops – exactly, again, like in life. Of course, not always the change is for the best. Of course, there are backwards slides. Of course, there are mistakes. But there's no standing still. Yup, just like in life, did I say that already?

(continued...)