My favorite season

September is my favorite month and it's almost here. I live in the Northwest and I love rain and hate extreme temperatures on either end of the spectrum so it's not surprising that I like the Fall. I like Spring too, again not surprisingly, I enjoy the smell of lilacs and I, usually, am happy when my birthday comes around (in May), but Fall is my favorite time of year.

I think it had a lot to do with school at first. Not that I was so into school, from an academic standpoint. At least not until recently and by the time I developed a deeper academic interest I was in classes year-round anyway. It's just that school gave me something to do all day.

I grew up in the country and my closest friend (by closest I mean geographically closest) wasn't really within walking distance, maybe within biking distance, which I did sometimes, but not walking distance. I didn't live on a farm or have any major responsibilities in the summertime. Summers were boring. My brother was too much older than me for us to really hang out together so I was left to my own devices a lot.

I'm not saying I couldn't entertain myself. I had an active imagination and I was active in general, so tree climbing and building forts in the woods were always top items on the agenda. I also loved television so that helped. If all else failed and I was just bored I'd bake cookies, and once an ill-advised pie from the cherries on the tree in our yard. So, it's not like there was nothing to do, but I appreciated the interaction with kids my own age that came with the start of school each year.

Given my status as somewhat of an outsider with the kids at school one might think that summer would offer a welcome reprieve from the constant effort to fit in. That's not really how I saw it though. The constant effort to fit in, while usually a resounding failure, was at least a challenge, something to do to fill the days.

Now that I'm an adult, filling my days isn't an issue. I have a job that fills eight hours a day, well actually nine hours most days and four on Wednesdays, more if you count the commute. Right now I'm also in the process of looking for a new apartment so that takes up a lot of my time as well. Now, when I turn to baking, as I did this past weekend, it's more out of avoidance than boredom.

I still love Fall though and I'm not sure if it's just the cooler temperatures and increased rainfall that make it so appealing. Sure there's the look and smell of falling leaves. There's the cocoa and apple cider. Pumpkins. Baseball playoffs. A new television season. It becomes much more accepted to stay inside with a good book rather than going out to play. There's something else though, something intangible, something specific to the month of September. I'm not quite sure why it is exactly that I love September so much, but I do, I love it and it's almost here.

Redefining perfection

A lot of the stuff I write here are the things I would write about if someone gave me my own newspaper column (sports, politics, television, etc.) and I think a lot of blogs out there are like that. However, sometimes I think a blog is really just like a diary or journal except it's not at all private because it's posted on the internet for anyone to read. Certainly I've also posted plenty of bizarre personal details up here in addition to the bits about sports, politics, television and literature. Right now though, I'm going to take a turn for the girly with the thinking-of-my-blog-as-a-diary thing.

I picked up a Nora Roberts novel at the grocery store yesterday. I know, I know, I read romance novels, I'm a girl, get used to it. This entry isn't going to be peppered with high brow references to Beckett or Cervantes or talk about political events ripped from the headlines of the New York Times, or even my flowery new age metaphysical philosophizing. It's going to be about romance.

This romance novel has a line in it that I really liked, that put me back in touch with my inner girly-girl. The guy in this story had noticed an older couple and been struck by how in love they still seemed after 30 years together, he didn't get it really, but of course this is a romance novel so by the end of the story he's figured it out. It says, "He knew now what caused a man to fall so deeply in love that it never ended. It was finding the unique woman, and what knowing her could do to your heart". The unique woman. Not the beautiful, or smart, or funny, or sexy, or exciting, or any-other-more-specific-adjective woman, but the unique woman.

That's the fantasy right there. At least it's the one that I buy into. Somewhere out there is a guy who will find my very specific and bizarre grouping of personality traits perfect for him. Somewhere out there is a guy who describes the perfect girl as someone with an argumentative streak who likes classic rock AND bubblegum pop, who loves logic but is also a hopeless romantic with a ridiculous amount of faith, who likes baseball but refuses to watch it on television (except when her home town team makes it to the playoffs, but that hardly ever happens), who eats Skittles one color at a time, who loves to do NY Times crossword puzzles even though she sucks at it and can't get past Wednesdays, who sometimes sings under her breath (wildly off key) when she's writing or cooking or doing the dishes, who likes Bruce Willis actions movies, who loves to travel, who would think a punk rock show was a romantic date but would also be happy to stay home and watch TV and bake cookies, who likes to eat the limes that come with her gin and tonics, who likes to read classic works of literature but also Harry Potter books and romance novels, etc. Somewhere out there is a guy who's perfect woman is me, couldn't possibly be anyone else given the unique and specific definition he has of the perfect woman.

I have my unique and specific definition of the perfect guy. I've always said that what I really want is a guy who'd be happy at a baseball game or the theater, at a rock and roll concert or staying home and reading a good book or watching TV. The broad strokes stay the same - smart, funny, classic rock, baseball, optimism, books - but it gets more specific when applied to specific guys.

In the books, the romance novels, it's not like the guy has this definition of the uniquely perfect woman already in mind and the girl happens to fit it. He meets the girl and falls in love with her and in the process of doing so comes up with the definition of the perfect woman based on her. It's like another one of my favorite lines, delivered with that complete romantic sincerity that's quintessentially Matthew Perry, in the movie Fools Rush In. He says to the girl, "You're everything I never knew I always wanted".

Of course in the fantasy it's a two way street. You're redefining in your head what the perfect guy is, and it's him, while he's redefining in his head what the perfect girl is, an it's you. For some reason whenever I meet a guy who thinks I redefine perfection he doesn't redefine it for me or when I meet the guy who redefines perfection for me I don't do it for him. I'm sure though (see above regarding my inner hopeless romantic) that somewhere is a guy who will think my penchant for exaggeration and overuse of the words "basically" and "essentially" is cute and I'll find his flaws adorable as well.

Tell me a story

There's a concept in story telling called "suspension of disbelief" that enables the normally rational human mind to accept the often wildly irrational twists and turns of a story, be it in literature, film or television. Some people have a problem with it. Some people are constantly saying, "that could never really happen". I've never been part of that camp, I think maybe that I have no disbelief to suspend. I get caught up in stories and in moments. I love them. All types, but in recent years my favorite have been the ones on television.

I've had a life long love affair with television starting with Sesame Street. I've always held the opinion that the common view of television, that it's the "idiot box", couldn't be more wrong. Maybe some people do turn off their minds when they turn on the television but it's not television's fault it's their choice and if not TV they'd find some other method to disengage. I've never turned off my mind when I turned on the television. That statement may seem at odds with my previous one about not having a problem with suspending my disbelief but it's really not. When other people say that something in a story is unrealistic I would always ask why and do my best to argue the point. If anything television is responsible for my precocious nature. If anything it turned on my mind.

In high school I abandoned television for a brief fling with film. Part of the shift was the fact that we didn't have a TV in our house when I was in high school (except the small black and white one I kept hidden in my closet so I wouldn't have to miss the last season of The Wonder Years). During those years my dad used to take me out to the movies every week and I loved them. I wrote my college admissions essay about the first movie I ever saw (Yellow Submarine) and, while my love for stories of all types still flared, I started to feel a little let down by television. I still watched some things...Seinfeld, Friends, Mad About You...but the love was gone.

Two things happened that renewed my love of television in 1998. Dawson's Creek and Sports Night. I get caught up in stories, it's true, and those two shows gave me moments that made me positively giddy. Moments that made me want to cry tears of joy for the beauty and perfection of great storytelling that I hadn't seen anywhere else in a long time.

When The West Wing came out in 1999 I started to realize that a lot of the film and television that I loved so much was connected through its writers. I don't know why it never occurred to me before that those moments I get so lost in may have been created by actors but they were conceived by writers. I became a devout Sorkin fan, of course, and I started noticing the connections other places as well. Having finally realized that my favorite stories seem all to be told by the same writers I should have realized that two of my favorite shows ever would have a writer in common.

I went to Barnes and Noble to buy some Dawson's Creek DVDs so I could relive some of those perfect moments whenever I wanted. The guy behind the counter told me about a book, called "Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing" by Jeffrey Stepakoff, one of the former writers on Dawson's Creek. The book details the stories behind the scenes of some of those perfect moments, that make me giddy, like when Pacey watches Joey sleeping at the end of "Weekend in the Country". It details Stepakoff's career in television writing. I've long since stopped being surprised by the writing connections between my favorite shows, but somehow I was surprised to find that Stepakoff, in addition to being behind some of those bits of television gold on Dawson's Creek, was also a writer on The Wonder Years.

I can't wait to see what his next project will be. Given his previous work, from The Wonder Years to Dawson's Creek to his book, I'm sure it will be great.