Can you see the real me?

Dan: Why do I want people to like me?
Abby: Yes.
Dan: Don't you want people to like you?
Abby Sure.
Dan So?
Abby So, I'm a likable person, and I assume people are gonna like me, and many of them do.
Dan: What about the ones who don't?
Abby: I don't really think too much about that.
Dan: Why not?
Abby: 'Cause many of them do.

It was suggested to me by a friend recently that my tendency to blurt things out is not only not a bad thing but actually an enviable trait. She was with me at a pub a couple months ago and she asked the bartender when his birthday was, and when he told us I said, "Of course it is, all the cute boys are Leos". She thought it was great, couldn't believe I'd said it, and she said it took guts.

That pales in comparison to the time I told a guy I had a huge crush on that he shouldn't have any trouble with women as he was smart and funny and cute. Or the time a professor was trying to make a point about insecurities and I claimed that when I was younger I'd never doubted for a minute that I was beautiful and then turned to the guys next to me and asked if they could blame me. At least with the bartender I could claim drunkenness though in truth I wasn't that drunk, and probably would have said it anyway, I mean, I was completely sober in the other cases. Alcohol does bring out this trait in me even more, but, as with most traits, alcohol only enhances what is already there.

I think her assumption is that I don't care what people think about me, but that's not true. It's just that I'm a likable person and I assume people are going to like me and many of them do so I don't worry too much about the ones that don't.

"For the sake of argument" is kind of my motto, so when my professor was tyring to make a point I had to disagree and it wasn't exactly a lie. Of course, the truth isn't that I never had any insecurities as a kid, it's just that they weren't about my looks (more about my personality). I couldn't not say it, you know. And when I think someone is cute, for some reason that thought can't just stay in my head, I have to say it. I can't seem to censor myself. It's not exactly intentional so I can't say that I really have guts. It's just who I am.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song...

I have in the past made a lot of jokes about meeting people online and how it's impossible to tell anything about someone from their online profiles aside from their favorite music (and books and movies and television). In fact I went so far as to post a facetious profile on the Yahoo personals saying as much (well, actually kind of saying the opposite, but...you know...irony and all that).

I just didn't think someone's taste in music said much about them, or I didn't think that I thought that. It's come to my attention recently that I actually put a lot of weight on a persons taste in music. Maybe more than any other single factor.

Also, the truth is, with my songs of the day, I was hoping to tell someone something about me. I said before that their purpose was to keep in touch (and that's true, and it was pretty effective) but also there was someone I didn't know very well and, while I wanted to get to know him better (probably because he had such great taste in music), more than that, or at least as much as that, I wanted him to get to know me better and I thought a good way to do that was songs of the day.

Being totally honest with myself here, the first time I saw him, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing a Social Distortion shirt, and one of the first conversations I had with him he was talking about seeing the Who live (a subject that I continue returning to, by the way, as seeing the Who live was one of the defining experiences of my adult life). Is it any wonder I wanted to get to know him better (and wanted him to get to know me better)?

Since I didn't actually send the songs of the day daily I often tried to tie songs together with a theme (the Diablo series, or the Chicks Rock series, or the Cheesy Romance series, etc), but with very few exceptions, I didn't really explain why I'd chosen the songs. Once he asked me how I picked them and I told him the same vagueness that I said here (that sometimes they were my favorites, sometimes songs I thought he'd like, or ones that reminded me of him, or songs to suit my moods, and sometimes they were random).

Sometimes I wonder if he got to know me better because of the songs, or just because of time, or because this blog is kind of tell-all-ish, or if maybe he knew me better than I thought already. I tend to believe that there is something fundamental about my character that some people just "get" and others don't and it isn't a matter of them knowing my favorite songs, or even my life story they just get it or they don't.

I like music. A lot. But it's a funny thing, you know. Some songs I like because because of the lyrics (they tell stories, or they make me feel something, or they describe something I have felt), some I like because of the music (they have interesting melodies, or just catchy ones, interesting arrangements, or use of unexpected instruments, etc.), and sometimes I just like a song for no reason that I can identify. Just like the songs of the day...

January 11th - In Gods Country (U2) - Well, U2 is one of my favorite bands, but that's not why I picked this one, he was in Israel (i.e. Gods country)
February 2nd - Never Been to Spain (Three Dog Night) - One of my favorite songs and at that point I hadn't ever been to Spain.
March 6th - Why Don't We Get Drunk (Jimmy Buffett) - I generally put my Zune on shuffle all the time and this song seemed to come on just as I was arriving at class, not every time, but enough times to be considered an interesting coincidence (if you believe in coincidences)
March 7th - Thrill of It (Robert Randolph) - I'd been to see Robert Randolph play at the Showbox that night.
March 12th - Then I'm Gone (Supersuckers) - I thought the titled was fitting since that was the day I left for Switzerland.
March 14th - Old College Try (Mountain Goats) - I thought he'd like this band and this is one of my favorite songs by them. It contains one of my favorite song lyrics ever ("in the way those eyes I've always loved, illuminate this place, like a trash can fire in a prison cell")
March 17th - Fiesta (the Pogues) - This song reminds me of him. He likes it, we talked about it.
April 20th - I Want to Break Free (Queen) - I'd been to see We Will Rock You in London that day
April 25th - Pints of Guinness Make Me Strong (Against Me!) - this was a band he'd recommended to me (that I love), and I'd been in Dublin.
May 7th - Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) - A lyric from which was the title of my blog that week.
May 13th - Jack and Diane (John "Cougar" Mellancamp) - A song I had stuck in my head that day, which I'd had stuck in my head before thanks to him (and thanks to a blizzard which got me snowed in where I was house sitting with among others a Jack and a Diane)
May 22nd - Bring it on Home (Led Zeppelin) - My second favorite Led Zeppelin song. My favorite is Over the Hills and Far Away (song of the day February 18th).
June 9th - Graduated (John Haitt) - This one is pretty self explanatory...it was the day I graduated.
July 21st - It's Only Me (Wizard of Magicland)(Barenaked Ladies) - The day the new Harry Potter book came out

That's just a dozen or so songs (out of over 400). There are, of course, more like these, that I chose for specific (and for the most part fairly obvious) reasons, but in a list of 400 songs, the ones with clear meanings (to me) are the minority. And even the one's with clear meanings...well...

I just wonder, does it really stand to reason that music is somehow a window into my personality?

Broken hearts (and bones)

I spoke a few days ago about heartbreaking bike crashes and since then the Tour de France has witnessed a couple of them.

In stage Fifteen Oscar Pereiro crashed on a switchback decent, he went over the edge and fell down to the road (when it switched back) below. Easily, that could have been fatal and it wouldn't have been the first fatal crash in the Tour. There have been three fatal crashes in the Tour (most recently Fabio Casartelli in 1995, also in stage fifteen). In fact, at first it looked like this was a fatal crash. The riders slowed down when they passed Pereiro, laying motionless on the pavement. His teammates stopped to check on him, of course. Miraculously he survived with only a broken arm (shoulder or elbow, I'm not entirely sure).

In stage Sixteen John Lee Augustyn crashed on another steep decent. He was fine, but unfortunately he lost his bike and had to wait several minutes for his team car to come with a replacement bike.

Augustyn, the youngest rider in the peleton this year (he'll be twenty-two next month), is riding in the Tour de France for the first time. On the final climb (the highest in the Tour) he dropped all of the top climbers in this years Tour. He accelerated about half a kilometer from the summit and no one could stay on his wheel. Just a few minutes later, on the decent, he crashed and had to do some fancy climbing up the nearly sheer face of the mountain to get back on the road. His bike though was lost and since his team was down to only a few riders by that point they're only allowed one team car and it was following behind the rest of the peleton (about seven or eight minutes behind him).

Crashes in the Tour are often dramatic, but these two are even more so than usual. They really highlight the danger involved in professional bike racing.

The Zen Tour Fan

Since my personal life has become more complicated than I'd like I've decided to focus my blogging on the Tour de France.

Not that my feelings about the Tour are simple this year either. You see, my favorite team (CSC) lost a rider in the off season. In fact, they lost my favorite rider. Dave Zabriskie switched to the Garmin-Chipotle team. He's not riding in the tour though, so I suppose I'm still free to cheer for Team CSC, and they've got a decent shot, with Frank Schleck, at winning the Tour. He's likely to lose time in the next time trial, but there are still a couple more mountain stages where he could gain enough time to offset the losses he'll see in the time trial. As it stands now he's only got 8 seconds on Evans, 38 seconds on Menchov, 39 on Vandevelde, and 49 on Sastre. Since Carlos Sastre is probably (technically) the CSC team leader, I don't think Schleck would mind losing to him. He lost a minute forty-seven to Evans in the previous time trial which was only about half as long as the upcoming one. Menchov and Vandevelde got time on Schleck in the time trial as well (both weren't far behind Evans).

I suppose I'd also like it if an American to won it. Even though I'm a huge fan of the CSC team and of the Schleck brothers, I'd love to see Vandevelde (who's racing on, the American sponsored, Garmin-Chipotle team as well), win this year.

My loyalties as a cycling fan are difficult to define. Its not like there's a home town team to root for. Although Tyler Farrar of Garmin-Chipotle is from Washington, he's not on their Tour team this year. You can bet, when he is I'll be rooting for him because he's local and because I have the added benefit of having met him and seen him race a bunch locally before he joined a pro team. Obviously, I have a certain amount of national loyalty. I like to see Americans winning races.

Beyond that, I couldn't say why I root for certain riders. I prefer the classics to the tours so I tend to like sprinters, and classics riders more than grand tour contenders. Also, it's not as much a situation where I like rooting for the underdog (like in baseball). I like winners, but I also like guys who seem laid back, whether they win or lose they say in the interviews something like, "Yeah it was/would have been great to win, but it's just a bike race". I like Tom Boonen, despite his resent arrest for cocaine, for all those reasons (i.e. he wins a lot, mostly in sprint stages or one day classics, and doesn't seem to care one way or the other), but I also like the way he looks in spandex so who's to say which of those are the reason I root for him.

This year...I guess I'm just enjoying watching the race and not really invested in the outcome so much.

Welcome to my life...

I've been thinking about getting a tattoo for a long time, so long in fact that it's kind of a joke. Likely I'll go on thinking about it forever and never actually do it. Of course, I thought about getting my belly button pierced for ten years before I finally did it, so I guess I shouldn't say never.

When I was younger I couldn't think of anything that meant enough to me to tattoo on myself and I can't imagine getting a tattoo that didn't mean something to me (in fact I can't imagine getting one unless it meant a lot to me, maybe everything). I finally came up with something I might want to get a tattoo of but then I got stuck on the irony of getting a Hebrew letter tattoo. It seems to be on other peoples minds as well because I've read no less than 5 articles in the last year about the Jewish prohibition of (or, depending on who you ask, aversion to) tattoos, the latest in today's New York Times. Apparently it's not as ironic as I would have thought, or if it is that isn't stopping people from doing it.

So, with that objection out of the way, I'm forced to face a much more difficult one. The thing is, I'm afraid people will think I'm not Jewish enough to brand myself as such. The truth is I don't think I'm Jewish enough. There are two pretty simple tests of Jewishness. One is, do you practice the religion, and the other is, do you have a Jewish mother and my understanding is that they are mutually exclusive. The Orthodox rule is that if you have a Jewish mother then you are Jewish. The Reform rule is that if you were raised practicing Judaism you are Jewish. The first takes a view of Jewishness as race (more than religion) and since I'm not big on organized practice of religion I guess that's the view that I should subscribe to, and that's the only view under which I am Jewish at all and even then I'm a couple of generations of mother's away from anyone that actually practiced the religion...but since that view doesn't really take into account religious practice, just blood ties...well you see why I'm hesitant.

Race is a tricky thing to get a handle on. Maybe there was a time when it was easy, black and white (pardon the pun), but now, at least here, the lines are a little more blurry. I have enough trouble just figuring out my own racial identity much less wondering about other people's lineage.

I recently found out that my great-grandfather (my father's mother's father) was from Finland, Swedish, but from Finland. This is actually not uncommon because the Swedes occupied Finland for quite a while and many of them still live there and identify themselves as Swedish Finns. Presumably that means they identify Swedish as their race and Finnish as their nationality. If that's true, and it seems to be, then it doesn't seem that easy to just lump all the people of European nations into one race, but that's another blog really.

Americans have racial versus national identity issues, perhaps, more than most nations. We're an immigrant nation and like it or not, believe it or not, we really are a melting pot. People came here and though they cut their ties to their home nations they can't sever all ties, some things are in their blood. So now we have Italian Americans, and Irish Americans, and Swedish Finnish Americans, and African Americans, etc, etc, and more to the point, combinations.

A combination is what you might call me (English, Irish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish Finn, either Native American or African, Irish again, Italian, Russian Jewish). So, which of those things should I identify with? Even if I answered that question it still wouldn't bring me closer to getting my tattoo. It would probably just give me more tattoo options (perhaps a shamrock), and we all know how great I am at making decisions.

The breakfast of the indecisive

I have another blog which I haven't posted on in months. It was created primarily to update friends and family about my trip to Europe last year and to talk about concerts and theater. I decided to fold the theater and concert bits in to this blog (sort of) and phase out the other blog (unless I take another extended trip) but even though I haven't posted on it in more than six months I still get stat reports on it and for a long time it was getting more hits than this one despite the lack of new content there. Most of those hits are coming from Google Images, and of those hits coming from Google Images most are from this picture:



That is a full (proper) English breakfast and I photographed it for several reasons. First of all, I promised a friend of mine that I'd take pictures of all my food on that trip, though in truth I rarely did and had it not been for the other reasons, probably still wouldn't have in this case. The second reason was a guy I met in Munich. He was from Scotland and was constantly complaining about not being able to find a proper breakfast in Germany, I told him I'd order one when I got to London and I promised to eat all of it, even the black pudding, and I took a picture of it both to prove myself (there's also pictures of me eating it for proof) and to make him jealous. The third reason I took this picture has to do with my inability to make even the smallest decision. You see, at greasy diners in the UK (and Ireland), you can walk in and order a full breakfast and cup of tea and they just bring this to you no further questions asked. You don't have a choice of meats, or a choice of toast, or a choice of teas. It's just breakfast and a cup of tea. I love the simplicity of that, even if I don't love baked beans for breakfast, or black pudding ever (unless I forget what's in it).

I love this picture, of course, for the reminder it is of all those things and more, but I don't think it's the best picture I've taken. In fact it's neither the most interesting subject I have pictures of on my other blog, nor the best photo.

There's this picture:



This is the sunrise over Lago Majora. First of all I would imagine Lago Majora to be a frequently searched term as it's a popular resort area of southern Switzerland/northern Italy and also a key location in a famous work of literature (Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway). Also this, I think, is a nice picture. It's one of my favorites. Of course it means something to me as well. I couldn't sleep when I first got to Europe. I should have been exhausted but for the first week or so, I just couldn't sleep in, and was up before dawn everyday. Like kids on Christmas eve who are too excited to sleep because they can't wait to tear into their presents, every day of that trip was a gift that I couldn't wait to tear into. So, yes, the picture means something, but a) so does the picture of my breakfast and b)I would expect this picture to be a more interesting subject (to people who aren't me) and a more visually appealing picture than my breakfast.

I also have pictures on that blog of Robert Randolph playing at the Showbox:



and the Mountain Goats and Pony Up at Triple Door:

Okay, those two aren't especially great pictures, but they are more interesting subjects than my breakfast.

I have all sorts of pictures there, pictures of Bellinzona Castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein, cute animals, cathedrals and landmarks across Europe, not to mention boys in bike shorts,

but what people seem interested in is the picture I took of my breakfast.

Heart and soul

They have these interesting commercials on Versus this year to accompany the Tour de France. Essentially they are ads for their own tour coverage, but the ad campaign is called "take back the tour", and the slogan, which is more manifesto than ad slogan goes, "screw the dopers, politics, and critics, the false allegations and fair weather fans; they ripped the soul out of this race, but the tour doesn't belong to them...it belongs to us."

There are several of these ads. One that just shows a rider coming up one of the harder climbs in the Tour, through a tunnel of fans and has the above slogan flash across the screen. Another that has reverse footage of some of the famous riders who've been caught doping (or were suspected to be doping) set to Paul Weller's Brand New Start.

They're a little cheesy, and a little too obvious in their design, but I have to admit one of them gets to me a little. There's one that shows crashes with a voice over saying that in a sprint finish they're going an average of 40-45MPH and on a mountain descent up to 50-60MPH and then says "next time you're in your car at 50 miles an hour, strip down to your underwear and jump out the door, that's what it's like to crash in a professional bike race"

There are, of course, a few reasons this ad strikes a chord with me. I did spend several years of my life loving a bike racer and, in addition to washing jerseys, and making smoothies, and grilling chicken, and baking cookies, and standing by the side of the road to cheer and hand him fresh bottles of water, I also played nurse maid to a few cases of really bad road rash and worried constantly about the possibility of other, far more dire consequences of bike crashes.

However, lately I'm thinking that the main reason this particular ad might really get to me is because I seem to have more than my fair share of empathy. The past few years some of my friends have been spectacularly mistreated by other friends, spouses, or exes and I, of course, have a lot of sympathy and/or empathy for them, but remarkably I find myself really feeling sad for the people dolling out all the hateful behavior. I'm saying to my friends, who are in pain, how bad I feel for the person who caused them that pain. The really sad thing, I say, is that they can't love anyone, least of all themselves. Imagine how low their self esteem must be, how afraid they must have to be to not even be able to accept love from someone without having to stomp it out(to say nothing of giving love to anyone). I have friends that are so close they're like family to me and so, when I see people who don't really have friends at all, they have acquaintances, or worse "contacts", but no real friends, no real love in their lives, I feel indescribably sad for them.

I know at first glance these two things might seem unconnected (physical pain vs. emotional pain), but if you've had any close contact with bike racers, if you've seen them lose the race lead due to a crash, or have to abandon a race due to a crash, you know the physical pain of their injuries pales in comparison the the emotional pain of coming so close to something and then having in snatched away. You see guys crying when they have to abandon the Tour and I can almost guarantee they aren't crying because of injuries (at least not entirely, or even mostly, because of their injuries)...okay, I can't say for sure that those tears aren't caused purely by physical pain, but if I were a betting woman (and who am I kidding claiming not to be), my money would be on those tears being, at very most, 40% caused by physical pain and 60% by disappointment.

A prime example would be Tyler Hamilton, who's superhuman pain tolerance is legendary, when he had to abandon the 2004 Tour. My guess would be on an even greater disparity, more like 70-30 or even 80-20, between the disappointment and the physical pain. When they have to abandon Tour riders are almost always crying or clearly trying very hard not to. Even Jonathan Vaughters seemed close to tears when he had to abandon the race in 2001 because he'd been stung by a wasp (which he was violently allergic to) and couldn't take anything for it and also stay in the race because the treatments for such an allergic reaction are banned substances. Dave Zabriskie didn't have to abandon the race (at least not right away) when he crashed in the team time trial, but when he crossed the line, alone, his skin suit all torn up, looking down, he looked so sad, it broke my heart. But maybe my heart breaks a little too easily.

You're my...protagonist?

From my last post you probably picked up on my pre-occupation with character arc. I took some screenwriting classes several years ago and my classmates and I got into a spirited debate about character arc in action films. There's a pitfall that action films often fall into because people (including, often, writers) equate the character archetypes of "hero" and "protagonist" thereby writing stories that have no one, no character, driving the plot. You see, a hero doesn't have to have arc, and often they don't. The example our professor used to illustrate this concept when defining all the character archetypes at the beginning of our course was James Bond. Bond is not the protagonist in the Bond films. He's the hero. He never changes, his goals and motivations remain static from beginning to end of each film and across the entire series of films. According to my prof the Bond girls are usually the protagonists in those stories.

Spiderman would be a good example a story, or series of stories, where the hero is also the protagonist. You can see though, how it might be easy to write a story with a hero and no protagonist (and therefor no plot) and if you're a lover of action films (like I am) you can probably name, without much effort, a dozen or so films that fell into this trap.

Someone in the class had the audacity to criticize one of my favorite films for this very problem, and I had to set him straight. The film is Armageddon and he believed that Harry (Bruce Willis' character) was trying to do double duty in the story as both hero and protagonist, and he felt that the character didn't really change enough. His claim was that the only difference at the end is that he has come to trust AJ (Ben Affleck's character) more and he didn't think that was enough of a change. I, of course, disagreed and here is what I had to say about it at the time:

I think the change that Harry goes through in Armageddon is multi-faceted. However, trusting AJ was the essential change because it was his passing of the torch, admitting that he couldn't do it all by himself now and that someday (much sooner than he realized) he wouldn't be around to run things anymore, either in the drilling business or in his daughter's life. He had to trust someone to take over for him. Also, he started to trust the captain as well, whether it seems this way to most or not, I think that in attacking the guy the way he did, that whole exchange was about both those characters overcoming their distrust of each other in order to work together and get the job done. The thing about Harry was that he was a control freak and that control was being taken away from him, he couldn't control the asteroid, he couldn't control his daughter, he couldn't control AJ, he couldn't control his crew, he couldn't control the astronauts and in the end he had to let go of it all.

Also, if you want to get deep into the psychology of that character, his goal was not to save the world his goal it was to protect his family which consisted of his daughter and, though he wouldn't admit it, AJ. In the end his putting trust in AJ,his realization that AJ was part of his family, his passing the torch to AJ was the fulfillment of his goal, he saved the Earth and accomplished his real goal which was to protect his daughter, he left her in the best possible hands. I think you aren't looking deep enough at the protagonist's goal. It's more complicated than saying that in Armageddon the goal is to save to world, in Jaws the goal is to kill the shark (or save people from the shark), in Batman the goal is the defeat the villain. Save the world, kill the beast, defeat the villain, those are the action in action films but the real story is why our protagonist feels compelled to do those things or why they are reluctant or what do they really want.

I think that all Harry wanted in the world was to protect his daughter and therefore his trusting AJ is the essential change in that story, he realized what she did and didn't need protection from...she did need to be protected from the asteroid the size of Texas hurtling towards Earth, but she did not need protection from AJ and in fact AJ being younger and likely to be around longer was better suited to protect her.

I think all of the oil drillers had their own motives for wanting to save the world, none of them had as a goal: Save the World. One guys goal was to get chicks, how? Save the world. Another's goal was to make his ex-wife and kid proud, how? Save the world. Harry's goal was to protect his daughter, how? Save the world, but also pass the torch, trust AJ, realize that it's not always the case that if he wants something done right he'll have to do it himself, that he isn't always the best man for the job and that AJ will be better equipped to take care of her for a longer time than he will.

If you have half a brain

I'm going to jump ahead and deviate from my existing songs of the day list because sometimes I'm non-linear that way.

The song for today is Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes. There are several possible reasons that this song might make the songs of the day not the least of which is that it's an unbelievably difficult to shake earworm (almost as bad as Hotel California but not quite). I saw Wanted on Thursday night and this song has been stuck in my head ever since.

Unfortunately I really have nothing to say about Wanted. It was okay. Lots of action very little plot. I find myself far more fascinated by the actors themselves than the characters they portray which is unusual for me because normally I'm far more captivated by fictional characters than real life ones. There are two really interesting characters in the film (Wesley's father and Fox), but they have very small parts.

In fact, even the song (Escape) has more of a plot than the movie. Two people, already together, but both still looking for that one perfect person. One places a personal ad and the other answers it. Both of those characters have arc, albeit a short, three minute or less arc, but arc none the less.

You see in that story a guy gets bored with his honey and he thinks that the one perfect girl is still out there. He reads a personal ad and it strikes a chord with him. He likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. He doesn't like yoga, and he has half a brain. So, he writes his own ad asking the girl to meet him and when she does it turns out the girl from the ad is the same honey he thought he was bored with but he now realizes that she is that one perfect girl he was looking for all along.

Really none of the characters in Wanted have that much of an arc. Wesley, perhaps, is not the same by the end as he was to start, though I would argue that his defining characteristic (i.e. he doesn't know who he is) remains the same. There certainly isn't any compelling evidence that he has any better idea by the end than he did at the beginning. His actions have changed but his motivations really haven't. And the more interesting characters, his father and Fox, definitely don't have arc, they are most interesting precisely for their lack of arc, their stubborn adherence to an ideal that has failed everyone.

In any event, the song was played in the movie and I've had it stuck in my head ever since, now hopefully I've passed it on to some of you.

Blame the writers

I've been feeling a little creatively stifled lately. For months now. No Inspiration. And in times like these I turn to what I consider the most inspired stories, hoping some of that brilliance will rub off on me. Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night), Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), and Joss Wheadon (Firefly, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

This time I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have this thing about television on DVD. I can't just pick up a DVD an watch one episode, esspecially not one in the middle. I have to start with episode #1 and then over the course of several days, or in the case of a series like Buffy that ran seven seasons, over the course of weeks or months, I watch every episode, in order. So, I've been watching it for a while and it's on my mind.

I have always had an issue with Willow's identity as a lesbian. You see, Willow's first love was a boy, Xander and her second love was also a boy, Oz. Never in the history of literature, film or television has there been a more perfect couple than OZ and Willow. Star crossed, surely, in some ways (he's a wherewolf for one), but perfect none the less. Their's was the ultimate romantic courtship.

Oz knew the first time he laid eyes on Willow, in her head to toe furry Eskimo costume, that she was the one for him. Of course, at that point she was still in love with her best friend (Xander, also a boy). None the less, Oz and Willow began cautiously dating and they hit some obstacles. Oz became a wherewolf and he had to be sure that Willow was really over Xander which took some time. Even though Willow had Oz, she kind of freaked when she found out that Xander had been getting busy with Cordelia in the broom closet.

In that episode Willow asks Oz if he wants to make out:

Willow: (after a pause) Do you wanna make out with me?

Oz: What?

Willow: (looks away) Forget it. I'm sorry. (decides she wants to know) Well, do you?

Oz: Sometimes when I'm sitting in class... You know, I'm not thinking about class, 'cause that would never happen. I think about kissing you. And it's like everything stops. It's like, it's like freeze frame. Willow kissage.

(He nods his head and smiles to himself. Willow smiles over at him. He looks up at her.)

Oz: Oh, I'm not gonna kiss you.

Willow: (confused) What? But freeze frame!

Oz: Well, to the casual observer, it would appear that you're trying to make your friend Xander jealous or even the score or something. And that's on the empty side. (looks off into space) See, in my fantasy when I'm kissing *you*, you're kissing *me*. (looks back at her) It's okay. I can wait.

Oz and Xander are both wonderful guys, and she loves them both a lot, both in many different ways for many different reasons, all of which is well established through both dialoge and action in the show, and neither of these are purely cerebral or emotional attractions.

Oz and Willow finally do kiss, and become a solid couple, but she betrays him with Xander. When Xander and Willow see each other in formal wear they suddenly can't keep their hands off each other. It's a sudden, and physical attraction, and they try to fight it, but they can't and ultimately Cordelia and Oz catch them in a compromising position. And later when Oz has forgiven her (a great scene by the way in which Oz says, "This is what I do know: I miss you. Like, every second. Almost like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso. So, I think I'd be willing to... give it a shot") she's all over him again. When they have sex for the first time she says it's the best night of her life.

The beautiful love of Oz and Willow was tragically cut short by Seth Green's desire to do other kinds of work. While I wish he'd stayed on the show, because he was my favorite character at that point, his leaving was one of the best scenes ever in the show, in fact one of the best scenes of any show. You see, Oz has to leave to tame the wolf that lives inside him, it only comes out at the full moon, but it's always there. He had to go, and Willow, even though she caught him in a compromising position earlier in the episode, doesn't want him to go. She asks him how he can leave, doesn't he love her, and he says that his whole life he's never loved anything else. To me it's more tragic than any other story. Usually in a tragic love story, one or both people die in the end, but here you have two people (or a person and a wherewolf) who love each other more than anything and he has to have the will to leave because if he stays he'll become something that will destory that love (and possibly kill a bunch of people).

That episode has a lot of Willow and Oz in bed together, or references to Willow and Oz in bed together and she seems pretty keen on it. Not the image of a suppressed lesbian, if you ask me.

The thing is, I didn't have a problem with her relationship with Tara. After Oz left, Willow was crushed and it took a long time for her to fully recover. One of the things that helped her finally snap out of it was Tara. Willow fell in love with Tara, she loved Tara just as much as she'd loved Oz and they had great chemistry together. At that point I have to believe that Willow is a girl who puts a premium on love and doesn't care one way or the other if it's with a boy or girl and that was believable.

Willow and Tara's love was also tragically cut short though and in season seven a new love interest was introduced for Willow. Her name was Kennedy and Willow liked her a lot, but didn't really love her, they didn't have a courtship at all. They had one episode in which Willow felt guilty (about killing the guy who'd killed Tara, and about moving on) and, like in a fairy tale, kissing Kennedy brought her back from the brink. But honestly, she looked uncomfortable every time she kissed Kennedy and I don't think that's bad acting. I mean, yes, the actress that played Willow is straight, but she never had a problem making me believe that she loved Tara and liked kissing her. She's a good actress, but it wasn't there in the material she was given. The love that she'd had for Xander, and Oz, and Tara, that was well established, had not been established with Kennedy.

Maybe, while she'd been physically attracted to both Oz and Xander and had loved them both, she found that she preferred women more in general after having a relationship with one and maybe after three such intense loves she just wanted to have a little fun but I didn't see that on screen.

It's true that if you're writing for film and television you can leave some things in the hands of your actors, or the casting agents. Probably if, in casting Kennedy, they'd put more focus on having actresses read with Alysson Hannigan they might have found someone who she had better chemistry with and that chemistry would have been enough to justify their attraction to each other. However, if the actors don't have any chemistry with each other, and they can both be great actors and still have no chemistry, then the onus is on the writer to show why those two characters are drawn to each other. The story has to justify the attraction if the actors have no chemistry, and in the case of Willow and Kennedy the story didn't do it's job. Since she had two clearly great loves that were boys and only one that was a girl and she never looked very comfortable with the one girl she was with after that, she seems to me, a bit like an Anne Heche type lesbian (i.e. someone who, after years of heterosexuality, happened to fall in love with a woman but who just as easily falls in love with men or, basically, she's bisexual).

Clearly I put the blame firmly on the writers' shoulders but maybe I'm too hard on them. Maybe I'm too hard on myself as well. Maybe I should be writing something whether inspiration has hit me or not. Maybe it doesn't have to be good it just has to keep me going. The project I'm working on now, that I've been working on for going on 9 months now and it's gone through several drafts, I started because it was national novel writing month and I didn't want to write a novel (didn't think I could), but I liked the idea of writing something just for the sake of writing, quantity over quality. Like athletes who train in the off season, they don't train at their regular level, they aren't out to set records, but they have to keep in shape. If that was the spirit I started writing in maybe that's the spirit I should continue in.