The End of Kings

I watched the last episode of Kings last night, viewing what is likely the best drama series this season (perhaps for several seasons, honestly), a series that took more money to make than most and had abysmal ratings from the very beginning. I've blogged about it before, so my regular readers will not be surprised. Watching what I knew to be the last episode, though, was pretty depressing.

Eight episodes of Kings. That's all I got! And while glorified soap operas, predictably trumped-up reality TV, equally predictable (and not funny) sit-coms, and even vacuous shows about vacuous housewives with too much time on their hands receive huge ratings, my beloved show--featuring perhaps the most compelling story I've seen in a while, presented by phenomenal actors through a magnificently written script--never grabbed the attention of most viewers. Most people never even tuned in. Those who did, and there were only a few, likely found the dialogue too advanced for their comprehension. So the series failed. 

This is not like my eye-candy beefcake series of last season. This is no Crusoe, consisting of two harmlessly buff bodies involved in various pirate-caused adventures that have nothing to do with the original book. I never said that show was great film making. I just loved it despite my knowledge that it wouldn't last and didn't have much more than visual appeal to offer. But Kings had everything: suspense, drama, beefcake (there was a pretty girl in it, too--just ask my hubby), romance, mythic parallelism, depth, intriguing characters, politics... the list goes on.

More than anything, it had a great script. I would love some day to write a script like that one, or even half as good. Yet the series failed. Why, oh why, doesn't someone start the Smart Channel, a TV channel just for actually intelligent people who don't find reality series (or fictional series) about petty people with petty lives, petty ideas, and petty differences appealing, but who gravitate to films and shows which actually use a little brain matter?

Maybe that's it. There isn't such a channel. Perhaps that's why I watch so little TV in the first place... the "boob tube" is for boobs. 

Can you tell I'm bitter? I can't wait for the DVD of the eight episodes to come out. I'm buying it.

Going, Going, Gone!

I know this is a short entry, but I just wanted to let all of you know that my posts would be few and far between (or entirely nonexistent) for the next few weeks. I'm off camping down the western coast... California, Oregon, and then back here, so I'll have limited Internet capabilities, and I'll hopefully fill my time with reading course textbooks and planning for classes. 

I'll be in Houston for the week after that, but since I am CERTAIN my sister has Internet access, I'll be able to work on my blog when I return. Maybe I'll post some pictures from the trip!

See you then!

Not Laughing

I believe, deep down, I have no sense of humor. 

Or at least, if I do have a sense of humor, it's vacuous and superficial, willing to laugh at a comedian, but not willing to dig deeply into what makes something funny, or to care about anything that brings a smile to my face. 

Don't get me wrong. By my very nature, I am overtly cheerful. I resemble Pollyanna more than any other person I know, despite my tendency to seek and tell truth. I'm a glass-half-full kind of person, living a life with little angst (and what angst I do have I put here). But my characteristics don't lead to a corresponding taste in literature. Certainly, I don't gravitate to the violent, or the sex-crazed star-crossed lovers sort of thing, but I also don't gravitate towards humor.

I'm reading through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince again (how many times has it been?), and I am struck by how little I value the humor of it the umpteenth time through. What do I love? The emotional impact. The seriousness of certain situations. Even in the film, the scene that left me coldest was the one in the Weasely twins' shop... and in the whole set of books, my favorite scenes are the serious ones... especially the dementor attack in Book #5. 

It isn't just Harry. It's every book I've ever read. I am drawn to the pathos, the weeping. I saw Gladiator three times in the theater--I even saw Titanic five times, and though the romance between Rose and Jack left me completely cold, I found the other "real" characters mesmerizing: the old couple snuggling together on their bed; the mother reading to her children below deck, knowing they would all die because she wasn't allowed to leave; the carpenter staring at the clock on the mantle, aware that it was all his fault the ship was sinking. The same events that make it certain my husband will never watch a film again are what drives me to see it. 

Maybe those films provide me with what I don't have in my real life. I have laughter. I have romance. I have all sorts of joy. I don't want real tragedy in my life, so I just enjoy it vicariously through film and books. I live through Harry, grateful that I don't have to live a life like his, yet fascinated by the trauma all the same. My writing does the same thing: it creates extraordinary events for me to involve myself in, fantasies that I would never want in real life but that are compelling for me (and hopefully, someday, for readers). 

What's missing in your life? What do you read/write for?

Doing Homework

My children are on summer break. They still have nearly two months of it, too (even though my classes start nearly a month before their school begins). Yet right now, as I compose this entry, what are they doing? Homework.

You probably figured that out from the title. 

And what am I doing? Homework. I wrote on my list of things to do today "Write Blog," so here I am, writing it. Next I put away the clothes I washed and folded yesterday, and after that it's dishes. And then dinner. 

Sounds like drudgery. And it sort of is, but it does come with rewards. Tonight, after I finish dinner and tidy up the house, I pick up a babysitter and traipse off to the movies with the hubby. 

Guess what I'm going to see (again). Yes, I saw it last week, but I can't get enough Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (or any of the previous ones, either). And now that the hubby's reminded himself of everything from movie #5, he wants to go to #6 (and I obliged, because I'm just that magnificently wonderful a wife). 

And when I come back, the dishes will be done, the kids in bed, the house clean, the clothes put away, my blog written... nothing more to do but bask in the memories from a darkened movie theatre. 

Bliss. Heaven. Perhaps even a bit of the spiritual. My kind of evening.

Well worth the homework... and a load of dishes. What will you reward yourself with, once your homework is done?

Linking to the Spirit

I know I discuss spirituality frequently, and I also know many of you are neither church-going nor religious (but still, this is my blog, and not yours, so sometimes I will write about things uninteresting to you). I do attend a church--a church whose members I like, and whose teachings are liberal enough to not offend me. 

HOWEVER, I realized, during church yesterday that I have gone a long time without feeling anything. The hymns have had no effect on me, the recitations just sounded bland, and everything felt lame, felt unfelt to me, like we were all going through the motions, but not the emotions.

I am not the kind of person to raise a hand and say "Hallelujah!" or "Amen!" to anything. In fact, when other people do this in front of me, I find myself looking to the exit to make sure I have a clear means of escape. Yet I also tend to find spiritual energy in a setting, such as the outdoors or even a building (like a church). One church building in Independence, Kansas, where I used to live, felt spiritually potent to me. It was modeled after the ruins of a cathedral in Scotland, and it may very well be the most beautiful church I have ever been inside. Sitting in the church, when the lights were off and sunlight streamed in through enormous stained glass windows, was a spiritual journey in itself, restful, comforting, powerful. Not so when people were there. The services at the church, like the ones at the church I now attend, left me cold, and it wasn't long before I stopped attending. 

Why does all this matter? In some ways it doesn't. The spiritual world cannot be contained within a building, nor can it be controlled by people worshipping within a building. But when I cannot find a spiritual link to my own belief system, and when I am forced to keep it entirely within myself for long periods of time, and when a system intended to broaden and feed my spiritual journey does nothing but stifle it, I start to lose contact with the very essence which feeds my soul each day... and that is not a good thing. 

I don't want to be in this alone. I don't want to feel as if I am the one person in the world who sees the world as I do. But I have no idea where to go, or what to do, to find what I need to keep going. 

Any ideas?

What the Hell Am I?

Because she does it so much to me, I'm taking an idea from Rocket Scientist. Several commenters on her blog lately have described either her or themselves as "introverts," defining, in some way or another, what an introvert is, what he/she likes and doesn't, etc. When I was a child, I was painfully introverted. I still have trouble opening up in front of more than one person at a time, and only a handful of people in my life know even 10% of the real me. 

At the same time, I often come across as extroverted, especially in the classroom, where I use family stories, my dear husband, and other personal details to get my points across to students. For some reason, I feel safer in the classroom than anywhere else, as if my students would never do anything to betray me, while friends and relatives would (I may some day realize students will as well, but after 16 years of teaching they still haven't). 

So, am I an extrovert or an introvert? On the Myers-Briggs scale, I rank HIGHLY introverted, even more so than my own husband, who is most definitely an introvert. But what exactly does that mean? Does that mean I can't function in groups, or am socially inept? Not necessarily. A behavioral psychologist friend of mine--and an extreme extrovert--told me that it wasn't a matter of being able to function on one's own or in a group, it was where I received the most energy--what recharged my battery, so to speak. If I am energized by being in a group, I am an extrovert. If I recharge by being alone with myself, then I am an introvert. 

Honestly, though, such a definition might help all of you readers, but I find it still leaves me unsure. I most definitely recharge from being alone. Most of my favorite hobbies are solitary in nature: painting, drawing, writing, piano, sewing. Yet I also thrive off of several groups I am part of--whether this blog (and it's readers and fellow bloggers), or choir, or my fantastic playwright's group, or even my monthly book group made up of LDS women who read an extremely eclectic group of books. I look forward to entertaining in my home, enjoy girlfriend get-togethers, yet I would go insane if I didn't have some time to myself every single day. 

So, what does that make me? 

This reminds me of a film I saw in 10th grade... it covered right/left brain functions, and even included a test to see which side was your dominant lobe. Supposedly, if you put your thumb up in front of an object, stare at it, then close one eye, then do the same with the other, one eye will move less or not at all (meaning the vision from one of your eyes dominates your viewpoint when both eyes are open). The greater the difference between the two eyes, the more one side of your brain dominates over the other. Then the film claimed that geniuses are made up of those who are very left-lobed or very right-lobed. 

And guess what? I do not have a dominant eye. Both of my eyes create an even shift when I do the test, even after 22 years. I guess that makes me a non-genius, introvert/extrovert with no dominant brain lobe. 

Can you figure out where you stand on the spectrum? Even better, can you figure out what any of it means? 

Hacking at Body Parts

I have been revising a play of mine recently--a kitchen sink drama, in reality, about a young woman who is trying to care for an elderly mother with dementia--and the first act was easy. Honestly, I was captivated by scene two--a scene which has been staged on its own, with a full production, in Kansas. But then Act 2 began, and I realized that what had been brilliant in the first act (okay, so maybe not brilliant, but pretty damned entertaining) had gone terribly wrong in every way imaginable. 

And I mean wrong. It wasn't a few bad lines. Characters did things they would never do. Situations were resolved through unrealistic means. Everything turned into a sit com. It was almost unreadable, and my stomach turned as I read the last few lines of the play and realized the whole act had to go.

I shut my computer and went upstairs to try to eat a bag of chips. After a handful, I realized that eating myself into oblivion was not going to change the fact that the whole second act was utter trash. If I tried to leave the scenes intact, but change what happened, I'd only steer awry again. I had no other choice but to get rid of everything. 

I trudged back to my computer, saved the play as "revised," and deleted all but the first three pages of Act Two--some 40 pages or so of play. Yes, they are still on the first draft, but the only way I will ever resurrect them is if someone steals my play and I have to produce proof that I wrote it years ago and even revised it significantly. Those scenes no longer belong to my play. I have cut them out for good.

Hopefully my description shows how difficult it is to cut out what doesn't work. I would think it might get easier over the years, but it doesn't (yes, I've scrapped huge chunks of work before--I even threw out the first two attempts at novel #3--changing the point of view, and then changing the main character--deleting 68 pages the first time, and over 150 the second). I felt, as I highlighted the offending scenes in this play, as if I were taking a hatchet to my legs, chopping them off right above the thigh bone. Would I be able to stop the bleeding? Would I end up infecting the whole thing--and thus destroying it? Would I ever be able to finish the play now? Would I figure out how to fix it so that it finally works? Would the cancer just grow back?

I don't know the answers. But now I have a much cleaner slate, and I'll know soon enough. Without the past words sitting in front of me, perhaps my cleared state of mind will show me where the characters need to go. I sure hope I figure it out. I hope it was worth the pain.