(no subject)

Dude, I go to sleep for eight hours and I come back to find fifty messages in my inbox and skip=60 on my flist. Not to mention it's National Coming Out Day (ironically, as I will not be leaving my flat, let alone my sexual identity) and Christopher Reeves died.

I owned a pair of Superman pyjamas when I was five. It had feet on it and even had a cape. I wore it to ill-fitting threadbare tatters and was terribly upset when we had to get rid of it. Granted I'm not the biggest fan of comics in the world, but I've seen all the Superman movies, even the really really bad ones -- and that was most of them, mind you. Whether or not he was a hero in real life (and people have had Words on the subject) he defined Superman for me.

I think perhaps it's quite ironic that he died today, as Superman never really did get fully out of the closet, did he?

So! Rest in peace, Superman, and the rest of you, come dancing out! And if you need some encouragement, I recommend The Best Little Boy In The World and The Rubyfruit Jungle, both excellent semi-autobiographical stories about people struggling to be who they are.

Cos everyone ought to be who they are. Especially superheroes.

(no subject)

Sometimes being an academic does amuse....

Some peoples are too primitive to make masks. None are too wise to believe in magic. The abysmal bushmen of Australia do not carve themselves false faces; they do not even use animals' heads. Their speech is so debased that they cannot understand one another without the use of gesture; therefore they cannot talk in the dark....if [the bushman] fears a dearth of kangaroos or grasshoppers or whatever else may furnish forth his table, he acts a little play in which these things are shown coming to be killed.
-- "Masks and Demons", 1923.

Read a book, buddy!
-- Anonymous margin annotation next to the above passage.

(no subject)

I can't actually say I've been trying, actively, to figure this out, but it has come up once or twice, so I'm glad I finally have.

See, I'm not a sitcom fan. At all. I watched Friends once in a while, but even then -- Friends typically has a main plot and a smaller sideplot -- I usually hated one of the plots. Same with Frasier, because oh, my god, so much humiliation comedy. The rest of them just don't interest me.

The first sitcom I've really enjoyed in forever is Two and a Half Men, and I finally know why:

A series has to stay true to what makes it distinctive, [Actor Charlie] Sheen said -- and [Producer Chuck] Lorre concurs. He describes the "litmus test" that each "Two and a Half Men" episode must pass.

"Is there any other show on television that can tell this story? If so, let's not do it, it's generic. How is it specifically a show about our characters, one that only we can tell?"

What a great attitude to have towards anything in the entertainment business. I wish more playwrights thought that way. We might have a much wider variety of plays each season, instead of a couple of tired postmodern pastiches, movie or book adaptations, and one or two Arthur Miller wannabes.