More on summer teaching

Dear course webpage,

Why did it take me multiple hours just to upload approximately ten songs and a course description?

Also, why did several of your default category headings vanish without warning? Not that they were useful headings, but I don't like when the webpage makes its own decisions without me.

While we're on the subject, have you considered a makeover? Your plain black text on a white background is sort of hip on WordPress, but it really isn't the most exciting thing I've ever seen.

Yours,
An instructor who knows the internet doesn't need to be that complicated and awkward

PS: I promise that my next post will not be in the form of a letter. I am starting to feel like a Victorian diarist.

From the mailbag

Dear Student Enrolled in my Summer Class,

No, you may not miss one third of the class because you want to go to Europe.

Yours,

Instructor

Moving and shaking

This weekend I turned my childhood bedroom into a sitting-room-cum-office for my parents. That's the Latin cum, not the vulgar English cum, for those who are prone to indelicate thoughts. It now houses my father's desktop computer with various accoutrements (if you put it in italics it gets the funny accent it requires), my mother's cough assist machine, the television and all six DVDs my parents own, and several comfortable-but-firm chairs. It also houses a bed, of course, since Mom refuses to give up on the notion that my sister and I are really still living there. The room's change of function required drilling a hole in the side of the house to run the cable to the TV, as well as moving the desk and giant bin of LEGOs into the garage.

Related: does any one of you want many, many LEGOs?

Each time I visit the parents, more and more of my childhood slips away. I relish this change, though of course I bitterly resent the reason for it. I have been thinking rather a lot about the process of growing up, of "maturing" as they say. In the immortal words of Marx—Groucho, not Karl—whatever it is, I'm against it. It may be a peculiarly Southern California affectation, though I doubt it because of the brevity of my tenure there and the relative consistency of this attitude, or it may be a result of my hippyish upbringing, but I believe in constant evolution and change without a defined endpoint.

(Have I written of this before? I have meant to, but I can't recall, and I am far too lazy to scour the archives.)

I heard someone say recently that he couldn't possibly do something new because he was in his 60s. I think it may have been my father. I find that appalling. I have heard many people say that they are too old for certain aspects of life that are related not to age but to financial situations. That is differently appalling, but appalling nonetheless. Age is very frequently associated with stagnation, with a stability that is by no means necessitated by growing older. People who have reached a certain age without "settling down" are considered, by USian society at large and often by their most intimate associates, to have, in some ways, failed to age properly. If financial stability is out of reach, for those who have been brought up in the upper economic classes, then one is immature, childish, not yet there.

In this case, italics do not indicate a funny accent.

These assumptions are, frankly, bullshit. Many people never attain financial security, and they are not "immature." Many people are not aiming for six-figure salaries at all. Ditto long-term romantic partners and children. The latter is more accepted than the financial angle, I think, within certain circles. A life of change, of continued development, of growth unrelated to aging, is not a sign of having failed to reach the appropriate endpoint for growth. It is a necessity for avoiding the quiet desperation Thoreau pointed out, lo these many decades ago.

This doesn't mean, of course, that achieving financial stability, romantic stability, or even literal stability (not moving around so much) is in and of itself a bad thing. Those don't necessitate stagnation. They merely have the capacity to lend themselves to an acceptance of who-you-are as who-you-must-always-be, an acceptance that can forestall continued personal growth.

I like to think that I will be different in the future, and that I do not know how. I know that I am not the person I was three years ago, when I moved to LA. I know that living in NY will change who I am again. This is good, necessary, and, in a non-pejorative sense, immature. Call me Peter Pan—or, better yet, call me Mary Martin—because I have absolutely no intention of growing up.



But that doesn't mean I need to keep all my old LEGOs.

Remiss

Hello internet friends. I am sorry it has been so long since last I posted. New York life has been busier than anticipated, what with several trips back and forth to my parents' place and to the post office. Fun fact: packages don't so much get "delivered" in my neighborhood. They get brought to the post office and hidden in a giant room full of other packages. There are two very small women who then hunt around the giant box room looking for the right one(s), and if they find them they push them at you through a plexiglass airlock. If they don't find them, they are sorry and there is nothing they can do about it.

My bedroom is shaping up to be a bedroom, with the addition of an all-important item. Yep, you guessed it: a bed. Actually, it's a mattress on the floor, but it's better than the floor by itself. I have also added a dresser, a nightstand, a fan (yay, high of 100 today! In Celsius, that's like a million or something. Or 6. I can't remember my Canadian units anymore.), and an hedgehog. The hedgehog in question has been busily exploring the new digs, and seems to have decided that he likes this place. He has yet to investigate anything outside my bedroom; we will see what he thinks of the or rooms.

I will try to post more regularly, but for now that must be all. It is too hot to think of full sentences.

The times, they are a-changin'

Hello, internet friends! It has been ten days since last I posted, and so very many things have happened! I turned 27, which feels much like 26, 25, and 24. I deleted my Facebook account, which feels much like 22, 21, 20, and all those other ages before there was Facebook. I contracted a horrible disease that I guess one might call a cold, but which seems like a milder version of death.

And, of course, I moved to New York.

I now live at the southern end of the neighborhood in Manhattan known as Washington Heights. Being who you are, dear readers, you may know it best from the musical set here, Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights. My exploratory urges having been tamped down by my coughing, sneezing, nose-like-a-faucet cold, I have yet to discover anything of the neighborhood's character, but I do know that there are several hardware stores nearby, none of which have paint chips and only one of which exhorts its customers to turn to Jesus.

I am living with some friends from college who really should get new code names, since I haven't given them any in about 2 years. I will take suggestions from those who know them (including the gentlemen themselves), hopefully settling on permanent ones within a few days. Thus far the Roommates to be Named Later and I have had quite an enjoyable time throwing a party, rearranging the kitchen, and planning things like painting, furniture arranging, and possibly eventually having beds. Living with them feels much like 23, the one age I missed in my earlier paragraph. Why? Well, because when I was 23 I lived with them. It's not much of a simile.

I already miss, of course, the Mysterious X, my previous cohabitant. This apartment will have far, far fewer donuts (refried or otherwise), giant ridiculous foods, and facts about that country to the north of this one whose name I have already forgotten without her expert tutelage. And less musicology, but perhaps that will be a welcome vacation? We shall see. I will attempt to reinstate, once I am healthy and settled, something approaching our immortal Bad Sci Fi evenings, if only to tempt her, the She God of Shark Reef, Z2, Gris, and our various guests to visit me in New York. Perhaps we will begin with a repeat viewing of Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.

I will also be rejoined here shortly by my previous cohabitant, the hedgehog known as Nikolai Funkhovzrovich Rostropovich. He has been on a six-month retreat living with the parents, but has worn out his welcome there and will therefore be once again living in my bedroom. Let me tell you, you don't appreciate hardwood floors enough until you've lived with a hedgehog on carpets.

Already I have done a little of each of the two things that necessitated my move to New York: taking care of my parents and going to see musicals. My parents remain in a bad state; that is a subject for another post on another day. The musicals I have seen were part of the West Village Musical Theater Festival, a series of short ("fifteen-minute," but in name only) musicals created by young composers/lyricists/book writers who included my friend and colleague from LA, the pseudonymous RPL. I'm certain she won't want that as her code name, since it comes directly from the short musical of hers that she wrote for this festival, but it'll do for now. Let me break down the shows just a bit.

1. Between the Bricks. A dystopian sequel to The Wizard of Oz featuring the theme song "Ding dong, the Wizard of Oz is dead." Couldn't hear the lyrics because the main singer (I believe his character was the scarecrow, known as Scare? Or possibly the character just called L, presumably for L. Frank Baum?) needed to be in a much higher register both for his own voice and to be heard above the chorus. Also, has the book writer read a book called Wicked? I hear they made a musical out of that already.

2. Hapless Romance. BEST. SHOW. EVER. A musical about Dungeons and Dragons that quoted both the famous Queen of the Night aria from Die Zauberflöte (Check out two of my favorite performances at those links. If you get sucked into watching all of the vegetable ocarina videos at the first one, don't blame me) and "A Little Fall of Rain" from Les Misérables to great comic effect! It started out by seeming like a deleted scene from I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change (awkward people are blind-dating each other; how novel!), but once the couple arrives at their date and the audience discovers that it's a D&D game, everything is FABULOUS. The Dungeon Mistress, played by the truly outstanding Sarah Stevens (I'm just guessing that the Sarah Stevens at that link is the same one), runs a tight and deadly game, with the standard dice rolling replaced for the theater by games of rock-paper-scissors. Also, Dungeon Mistress instead of Dungeon Master? Excellent decision. The idea of fantasy gaming dorks who are also women is still novel to some people, for some reason, and it was pleasantly normalized here (though "normal" is not a word to describe much of this show). I could actually go on for a very long time about the things I loved in this tiny little musical, but instead let me just say that all of the women involved (composer/lyricist, book writer, director, and most of the cast, which is already an awesome thing!) were truly fantastic, and the two men were not too shabby either, particularly the very funny leading man.

3. Galileo the Musical. I have stated often my heartfelt belief that if you need to add "the musical" to the end of your title, it's probably not worth doing, Cannibal! and Urinetown excepted. This did not challenge my theory. 'Nuff said.

4. Rat Poison Love. My friend's show! (I'll bet you thought Hapless Romance was hers, didn't you?) In the spirit of fairness, let me say that it was uneven. I really enjoyed the premise, and (for the most part) the performances. Above all, I enjoyed the music; the title song remains stuck in my head even now. The book and lyrics, though, were just not my favorite. They often seemed not to match the music's tone. Also, the show seemed very Next-to-Normal-inspired, which is not a bad thing of course, but can feel derivative if not handled carefully.

5. Annabel. NOT A MUSICAL. Somehow this won the Best Musical award from the set of shows I saw (there was another set of six more playing on another night), but it was, in fact, a ballet-pantomime in the best 19th-century tradition. Costumes were lovely, dancing was great, music was forgettable but functioned wonderfully with the choreography, and not one word was spoken or sung. Also, the plot seemed, to my not-so-dance-oriented eyes, to be "Boy meets girl. Boy sleeps with girl. Girl dies because she has lost her virginity so really what else is there for her to do." There's even a moment, in the concluding funeral scene, where the girl's father looks disapprovingly at the boy who killed his daughter, while everyone else looks at her corpse. Notice how not once does the title character, Annabel, function as anything other than the object of the boy's actions. The boy who is, inexplicably, named Humbert. Shades of Lolita for some reason? Also, the idea of Annabel's untimely death as somehow necessitating, at the dramatic climax of the story (though not the sexual climax), an interaction between her father and her lover? Patriarchy much?

Had I to rank the musicals, they would be as follows:

1. Hapless Romance
2. Rat Poison Love
3. Galileo
4. Between the Bricks
5. (disqualified; not a musical)

Okay, time to return to unpacking while fretting about my boxes (did I tell you the post office seems to have lost two of them again? Joy!). I hope you've enjoyed this visit to the depths of my mind, and that if you've found this entry by googling the name of your show, my somewhat uninformed reactions have not hurt your feelings.

On Golden Girls

So, The Golden Girls. For six years probably the best show on television.

For the seventh year...well...the explosion that made Dorothy's hair look like that must have knocked the funny right out of the writers.

There are many reasons why the Golden Girls were and are awesome. Gay characters throughout the series, none of whom were dying of AIDS. Women whose main relationships were with other women and that was OK. Celebration, time and time again, of non-traditional family models. Elderly people having sex lives. Guest stars from the firmament of the American musical. Shoulder pads. But the one that, I think, made the show stick for me the most, is the fact that each of the show's stars had both a deep, underlying insecurity and a firm moral core.

Allow me to explain. The firm moral core is easier--all four stars were staunch animal rights and quieter gay rights activists. While most of their animal rights work was for the ill-advised PETA, an organization whose strategies I usually find repugnant, that didn't matter. They all deeply believed in the moral necessity of caring for and about living creatures. Sitcom stars don't usually take such stances. The pro-gay stance, of course, moves me on a more personal level. It is lovely to see women who are being venerated by gay audiences—both men and women—return the favor. Bea now has a homeless shelter for LGBT youth named in her honor, funded by her estate.

The deep insecurity, though, is where the power of the show comes from. It's a hackneyed observation that great comedy often comes from a place of near-pathological need for approval, but that's not the kind of insecurity the Golden Girls showed. Bea Arthur did partake of the typical comic's need to be adored by everyone, but she wore closer to the surface her crippling belief that nobody really did. Listen to her solo show on Broadway, a decade after the Girls ended their seven-year run, and you'll hear a carefully constructed, brittle persona claiming to "just be myself." She couldn't be herself; nobody would like that self.

Estelle Getty, untrained as an actor compared to her co-stars, had to write lines inside props on the set, since she could never remember them. Her stage fright was legendary, often causing her to freeze on camera, and her comedic talent, though prodigious, was simply not suited to creating a believable character or to delivering those hastily memorized lines as dialogue. She felt out of her depth on the show, a fourth wheel on the tricycle both on-screen and off.

And then there's Rue. I didn't know about her insecurity until I listened to commentary she'd done for one of the episodes in, I believe, season five. She talked about her costumes, and how she got to keep them all after the show (though she took out the shoulder pads). She talked about how she needed Blanche's brazen assertions of physical perfection to be able to have any kind of positive outlook toward her own body. Those costumes, that character, they allowed her access to a confidence she didn't have in life. The heartbreaking part of that is, of course, that Blanche was deeply, deeply unsure about both her looks and her worth as a human being apart from those looks. And Rue thought of her as the character she had played that was closest to herself, but a model for being more confident. Like Bea, who needed Dorothy's aggression and unlikability to mask her own perceived unlikability (and non-femininity), and who needed her costumes to conceal the fat body she imagined and despised, Rue found herself in her character, in the endless hyperperformance of herself that was so much easier than simply living.

Betty White was always the most confident. I love Betty White, of course, and I thought of her as unquestionably the best actor on the show, but she lacks that need. Perhaps it is my hubris as a devoted fan, but the other Golden Girls seemed so much to rely on their characters and those characters' fans. Betty White was able to move on to other roles when none of the other girls really could. She knows that she's funny, talented, awesome; they survived on applause. Maybe that's what made it possible for her, the oldest of the four, to outlive her co-stars.

Applause is a poor substitute for nourishment, whether it be physical or emotional nourishment you seek. Bea, in her old age, would watch reruns of Golden GIrls at 5 AM and talk happily about how much weight she'd lost since the '80s, reveling in both the omnipresent laughter and the body that she had since shed. Estelle, sadly, succumbed very early to Lewy Body Dementia, her terror-inducing difficulty with memory now taken to the nth degree. Rue took to the Broadway stage in The Women and in Wicked to get an IV drip of laudatory sustenance; it kept her going for a few more years.


This overlong rumination on the emotional frailty of the Girls is not intended as a slight. They were, and in my mind still are, towers of strength for everyone who saw her- or himself in them. They took their insecurities, draped them in various shoulder-padded, floral-printed, and sadly pin-striped numbers, and paraded them about for all to see, conquering them, at least for seven years. They did wonderful things for people, animals, and not least themselves. Rue's passing is an occasion to mourn, of course, but also to recognize the work these four middle-aged and elderly women did for us all. From the bottom of my heart, Ms. McClanahan, thank you for being a friend.

There is ample room in the world for the patently ridiculous.

That is all.