My new favorite TV show

I love the kind of movies that don't get made anymore -- or if they do, they don't get wide releases in theaters.  Forrest Gump would probably never get near a green light these days.  The Fisher King?  No way.  I love Star Trek and Batman as much as anyone, but dramas that are about characters with no explosions, no superheros, no comic book characters, no young-adult franchise behind them, and no big promise to play big overseas -- those are some of my favorite films.  The Rewrite and Demolition are two recent examples of movies that received either no American theatrical release at all despite a beautiful, realistic story with subtle, nuanced, moving performances (The Rewrite) or a flop of a relatively narrow theatrical release with little promotion and no visibility just past the Oscars where it was sure to get buried, again despite wonderful performances in a quirky, emotional, life-affirming story (Demolition).  

So I was totally delighted to discover that the pilot for This Is Us (which I must admit I watched largely because I was a Gilmore Girls fan in high school with a huge crush on Milo Ventimiglia's brilliant, book-addict, intellectual bad boy character) is actually the television equivalent of one of those character films that could no longer get made.  The pilot even works as a stand-alone.  And it's beautiful, with a pace far slower than most television these days and very little plot movement -- but characters that are alive, flawed, confused, and very real.  One character, an actor, complains about how his character on his sitcom never gets anything real to do, and he's surprised when he's given a scene with substance that is well written.  Realistic scenes of substance might be rare in the show within the show, but scenes like that abound in the pilot of This Is Us.  In an age where scenes seem to get shorter and shorter and no one ever seems to have meaningful conversations without exposition (my favorite line of the Designated Survivor pilot: when Kiefer Sutherland's character's chief of staff inexplicably throws into an early conversation with him the sentence "You're the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development!" ... What, does the guy have short-term memory loss?), the sheer length of scenes in the pilot episode in which characters just TALK to each other is incredibly refreshing.  The wonderful Gerald McRaney, in fact, speaks for a solid two and a half minutes uninterrupted at one point -- and it's not a second too long.   And few shows would dare let the other character in that scene be so realistically silent throughout.  If there are other shows like this on TV, I'm missing them.   

Characters like those in This Is Us might not often get the chance to live so fully on the big screen these days, but I hope we get the opportunity to empathize with these characters' plights -- through their love, doubt, fear, strength, determination, humor, and zest for life -- for years to come on the small screen.

Ice Cream Social

My favorite moment of the day -- when a guy who I thought was creepily hitting on me was actually just creepily hitting on, well... you'll see: 

 

Today as I was standing in the frozen foods aisle looking through the glass doors, I saw, through my peripheral vision, a guy walk up next to me.  I of course thought nothing of it, but then I heard him say, in a low, creepy, seductive pickup voice, "Oooo.  Ooo yeah.  That's it.  That's what we want.  That is goooood stuff."   My immediate reaction was "Is this guy for real?  Is he hitting on me?  In the frozen foods aisle?"  And then I looked.  And laughed.  Gazing longingly through the glass doors at all the boxes of ice cream while bouncing his baby boy in his arms, he continued to his son, "That's the real deal. That's the real ice cream.  Oo yeah.  We want that.  Mmhmmm."

 

He was hitting on the ice cream. 

 

And who wouldn't?

My first dinner date

Throughout my years in high school, no one asked me out.  There was one guy who I'd had a crush on from the first grade all the way up through the end of high school, and one day senior year when my mom and I were at the mall and I saw a beautiful prom dress, my mom told me that if I asked the guy to prom, she'd get the dress for me, regardless of whether he said yes.  Unfortunately for both me and my wardrobe, I never got up the nerve to ask him and never got the dress (and didn't go to prom).  And that was the closest I came to a date in high school.

The first guy in college ever to ask me out did so via AOL Instant Messenger.  He didn't own a cell phone -- because he thought he was above them and looked down on them -- and so without any call, he showed up 30 minutes late to our first date (and my first date ever) with the excuse that he was doing his laundry -- and hardly any apology.  Beats me why I waited 30 minutes for him.  After he stood me up on our last supposed-to-be-date (yep, I was idiot enough to agree to go out with him again), he IMd me that he didn't make it because he was stuck at a garbage dump... for real....  Yes, current me would have a loooong talking-to with 18-year-old me....

One of that guy's friends also asked me out via IM.  He had never even met me.  I said no.

Another guy in college asked me out via text.  I thought this was a big step up from IMing.  For one thing, it meant the dude didn't live in front of his computer (25-year-old garbage dump dude not only seemed to live in front of his computer but also lived in his dad's basement....  So this had to be an improvement, right?).  He drove a pickup truck, played the guitar, had his own off-campus apartment, and was (I thought) pretty cool.  I said yes... but apparently so did his mom, who accompanied us on our date... to McDonalds... while talking about her son's prescription meds.

So college dating was a bust.

Move on to New York, and every date ask-out was via text or e-mail.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think there's something romantic about doing it in person or on the phone.  I'm a sucker for the guy who thinks a girl is worth risking rejection for rather than the guy who's not willing to face anything more awkward and daunting than a soulless screen showing (or not showing) the distanced reply -- perhaps because, back when I was 17 and trying (but failing) to will up the courage to ask out my 12-years-long school crush, I didn't IM and I didn't text, so my only option would have been to do it in person.  And now 21-year-old me wanted a guy who had the gumption that 17-year-old me had been lacking in that area -- because 21-year-old me realized how important that quality was.

And then I met my now-fiancé a few months after I turned 22.  I was working for him at the time on a show, and he wasn't allowed to date me... so our "dates" were in between performances, catching dinner at a sandwich shop on two-show days or wandering around record stores -- great and fun and cool and no-pressure... but still... there was never actually a planned dinner date.  Our only dinners were while wearing our dingy all-black work clothes, usually in the cramped stage management office.  And in the happy years since, partly because we operate on completely different schedules and usually eat dinner about four hours apart, somehow we never once went on a dress-up dinner date.

And so that is how it has come to pass that up until this week, I had never been to "dinner and a movie," I had never been asked out on a date by anyone actually using their voice, and I had never been able to dress up for a date.

So when my fiancé told me about a movie he wanted to see on a certain day this week, I told him that I happened to be free that night, told him about a restaurant I wanted to go to, told him that I'd never been properly asked out and had never been to dinner and a movie, and told him that he was welcome to put those pieces of information together and do what he wanted with them.

And so he asked me out on a date two days later -- in person!!  Dinner and a movie!  What a pleasant surprise!  I said yes.

So I did all the first-date things I missed out on: I blasted girl power pop music while trying on every dress I own, I picked out my matching jewelry, and I tried on all my nice shoes (the sparkly silver ones won).  And the date itself was like any first date should be -- I ordered a salad and then ate his french fries, told him that I made a mess of the bedroom getting ready so he should probably not look in that room when we got home, responded to him telling me I had a piece of lettuce in my teeth by flashing a wide grin at him, texted back and forth across the table about the too-strong perfume of the woman at the table next to us (who I have to say had a very lovely yellow blouse), and bemoaned the fact that going to a nice restaurant meant that I couldn't shoot a straw wrapper at him..... Oh... Are those not things that are normal behavior for a classy date? Hmm...

So anyway, I think I just went on my first proper date -- showing it's never too late for firsts.  Too bad my mom couldn't take a picture of us on the front porch beforehand.

And going back to the straw wrapper thing... because I really do love shooting straw wrappers... this text today from my dad makes me proud to be known for the important things in life:

Questions on perspective, forgiveness, and morality

Last week I received an e-mail from the high school from which I graduated.  A teacher at that school was recently arrested and eventually sentenced to 14 years in prison for coercing or enticing a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity -- and it was subsequently revealed that there was allegedly a cover-up by the school and the teacher had sexually abused more students, and somewhere in there the young, well-liked headmaster committed suicide.  So these days, whenever I get an e-mail from that school, I shake my head and wonder what new disaster they're facing.  But this time, when I saw the name in the subject line, I held my breath hoping this wasn't what I thought it was -- because the name in the subject line was one of my favorite teachers.  When the story about Kyle Cox, the now-imprisoned teacher, broke, I knew that clichés such as "where there's smoke there's fire" and "when it rains it pours" were likely to hold true with the school.  After all, I had always thought it was likely that, in the atmosphere the school had established, there were more teachers who had had inappropriate relationships with their students.  But there were so few teachers at the school I really liked that surely this one whose name was in the subject line wasn't one of the bad guys... right?

Wrong.

As I read and reacted to this new e-mail informing the school community of the freshly-fired teacher's admission, I realized that reacting to and writing about Kyle Cox several months ago was far easier and simpler because it had nothing to do with my own life and memories -- I was writing about a villain I only knew from the newspapers and TV rather than about a teacher who always greeted me with my name and with a smile when I walked into the room, who made class fun, whose graded paper of my class final with a 102% and a red-penned "Great Job Jessica! Miss Statistics! :) " was up on my parents' kitchen bulletin board until just a few years ago.  This teacher wasn't creepy.  I never saw him act inappropriately in class or out.  He bridged the gap between jocks and nerds in his class and made math class cool even for the jocks.  I was only in his class for one or two semesters senior year, and while he wasn't one of those few teachers who had a lasting meaningful effect on me, I do remember his class as always a cheerful bright spot in my day, and I don't undervalue that in my high school experience.

Months ago, when I read comments by students and teachers who were trying to defend Cox and say what a great teacher he was for them or their children, I couldn't believe anyone could have anything good to say about him.  Who would try to defend a man who had so horrifically abused his power and stolen such a precious part of childhood from those entrusted to his care?  Yet, wanting to hold on to one of the few bright spots in my own memory of that school, my mind immediately tried to find excuses for this teacher: He was young when I was in school, and this e-mail says it was one student over 20 years ago, so maybe he was in his early 20s and it was an 18-year-old....  And he hadn't come to the school as a teacher but as a sports coach, so maybe it was before he had started teaching and the girl wasn't one of his students....  The rational part of my brain knows that does not make it okay; but some part is searching for a way to hold on to my own positive memory.  Can I hold on to the fact that that was a class I looked forward to, that that was a teacher who seemed to have an enormous amount of respect for me, that he was an excellent teacher who made learning fun?  Or do I have to give that up if I acknowledge him to be a sleazy villain just like Kyle Cox?  Or are there shades of villain? 

And what about forgiveness?  What and when are we allowed to forgive?  Are his and the student's ages at the time and the nature and extent of the relationship (which have not been made public) a factor in whether we forgive?  Is his remorse?  The e-mail says he was fired because "he admitted" to a relationship -- does the way in which the truth comes out affect whether we can forgive?  When I was discussing it with a couple other students from the school (because one of them happens to live in the same apartment building I do in a random neighborhood in Queens over 700 miles from that school -- 'cause, ya know, that's how New York works) and I asked, "If it's really only one and it was when he was in his 20s and she was a senior, would that make it forgivable?" one of the other former students jumped on the "only one" statement with the completely understandable reaction of "Oh right. Like it was only once."  But was it?  Do we judge the information in front of us or the assumptions that seem likely to be true based on patterns established by others?  Do likely conclusions we've jumped to by assumption play a role in whether we forgive?  Hollywood seems to have quite the double standard in deciding whether to condemn a man for similar behavior or to brush it off with a smile and a "But he's so talented!" comment because they want to continue to appreciate a creative genius and it's inconvenient to acknowledge that what he did is morally reprehensible and unforgivable.  So by that standard, consideration of the perpetrator's morality and redemption isn't even a factor in forgiveness -- the only factor is talent and output?  And if someone is a horrific villain to others, or to one student and her family, must he be a horrific villain to me?  Or can I remember his class as the sugar-and-sunshine easy breezy part of my day that it was to me at a high school I very much wanted to escape?

I don't know.

A note on my least favorite (and favorite) love song lyrics

"Just The Way You Are" by Billy Joel (written for his first wife) just came on the radio... and I have to express the fact that I really really really hate the lyrics to this song.  To me, they render the song quite possibly the most unromantic song ever.  The dude wants a girl who doesn't ever change or grow but just stays exactly the same as when he met her -- someone who's always "the same old someone that I knew"... someone who's just there so he can talk to her as long as she doesn't actually have anything to say back that might qualify as "clever conversation" -- because he doesn't "want to work that hard."  Oh, and she has his "unspoken" passion, though he "might not seem to care."...  So... he doesn't actually show or tell her how he feels; she's just supposed to know through ESP -- because he sang it in a song about how he basically just wants an unchanging doll? (And what if she wants to "try some new fashion" or change her hair color, as he expressly tells her not to do in the song?  I mean, dude, c'mon -- sometimes a girl just wants to play.  Fashion and hair come with the territory....  But apparently Mr. Static over there isn't down with that.)

Yep, that love is definitely a real winner....

 

No, to me the most romantic song lyrics ever written are those of "Go Your Own Way" by Lindsey Buckingham to his ex-girlfriend and still-bandmate Stevie Nicks....  What's that you say?  You think I've just picked the ultimate "Give your ex the finger" song as the ultimate love song?  Why, yes. Yes, I have.  Because through the anger and the hurt and the failure of their relationship, he's still telling her how much he loves her.  It's not a song of longing or regret or wanting to get her back -- anyone can write a song about that (which is why "I made a mistake and want you back" songs are every other song on the radio).  It's an honest, incredibly messy and confused, angry declaration of how he tried to give her everything and it all went sideways and came crashing down in flames.  But despite the fact that loving her "isn't the right thing to do," he wails "how can I ever change things that I feel."  And with no hope or agenda, and with a whole lot of pain and venom ("Shacking up's all you want to do" -- a line sometimes delivered in live concerts while looking right at her), he's still opening up his heart, telling her, "If I could, baby I'd give you my world" (also delivered while looking right at her), and to "Open up; everything's waiting for you."   The lyrics and emotion of the song are achingly passionate.  That's not a guy who wants a boring doll and is afraid to work.  That's a man who passionately loves a fierce, flawed woman; a man who continued to produce her music and help her write songs and in so doing (to paraphrase Buckingham in a Rolling Stone interview) knowingly became part of the machine helping her move even further away from him -- a man who isn't afraid of messiness but can't figure out how "everything turned around."  And THAT is a true love song. 

 

Oh yeah, and in case you don't know which of those two songs' song-inspiring loves has endured in all its passionate and beautiful, dysfunctional layers (or if you just want your heart to break a little when you see what happens when life gets in the way of love and, to paraphrase Buckingham again, when after years of holding on to a dream, illusions fall away), watch this (also written to Nicks, from Fleetwood Mac's 2003 album): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-KJvR_JWs8

 

And if you don't know the glorious break-up/eternal-love song that is Go Your Own Way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBYcbJBtjgE