To My Youngers,
With the cooler weather comes the return of my TV-watching evenings. It started with Torchwood, Season Two (now finished, awaiting season three), with a bit of Murder She Wrote thrown in there, but the real jewel in the crown, the centerpiece is, as always, West Wing. We're up to season five (I can't believe I still have two seasons to go! Two seasons I've never seen! Two WHOLE seasons! Two seasons? ONLY two seasons!?!) but I've been watching them with El, and only an episode or two a day is sometimes not enough, so re-watching earlier episodes often follows... Now with DVD commentary! Love it! Its so neat (neato, yes, I get cheesy when enthusiastic about something) hearing the actors and Sorkin and Schlamme talking about writing, shooting etc... but especially when they get the giggles, or they gasp or sigh- right at the same places we do (or where I do anyways...)! So neat. Neato. Awesome even! I love it!
But what I love even more than the commentaries, even more than the show as a whole, is Joshua Lyman.
Back when I used to watch West Wing the first time 'round, back in university, I completely adored Josh. I realize that he's a character, and usually one would say the actor's name ("I love Brad Pitt" not "I love Tyler Durdin") and that's applicable here as well, I do adore Bradley Whitford, but its not like I know much about him. Josh, I know- or know as well as anyone knows any fictional character... like how I 'know' Poirot or Samwise Gamgee..., but its the character as specifically played by Bradley Whitford that I adore. Yes adore. "Like a fat kid loves cake." Like a really fat kid loves really amazing cake. Which is to say, a lot. Still.
Now you go through phases in your life in many different ways. One of those ways is in who you have crushes on. For some people it was Joey from New Kids on the Block, or Tom Cruise in Risky Business... I don't remember ever having crushes on stereotypical guys like that. For me it was Jerry O'Connell (in Sliders, and before that in My Secret Identity), Scott Bakula (in Quantum Leap) or Joseph Gorden Levitt (in Angels in the Outfield), later Billy Boyd or Sam Roberts... but all of these crushes have varied over time- ebbed and flowed- and generally waned at least a little bit.
But not so with the Josh-love. The Josh-love is just as strong as it was back when I watched it the first time through. And I'm not gonna lie; its a bit odd...
Seriously though, As soon as he comes on the screen, particularly in a josh-driven-episode, Its like I'm back in 2001, sitting in my residence room, swooning over the way he walks. Or the way he raises his eyebrows. Or clenches his hands. Or ... well really everything to be honest. And when I watch those episodes, even when I watch episodes I haven't seen, all of that just comes back as strong as ever. Its weird. And awesome. And a little bit like time travel.
It doesn't seem to have stuck for anyone else in the same way. Maybe because he is actually an adult (clearly I don't still swoon over a twelve year old JGL the way I did when I was eleven...), maybe because he is the origin of my 'but even just the way he WALKS is sexy!" (confusing to almost everyone to whom I try to explain it...), maybe because he gets to talk in Sorkin-isms all of the time... What ever the reason, I'm pretty sure I'll still love him just as much when I'm old and grey as I do now, or did the first time I saw the show. Sorry future-real-life-love-of-my-life, Bradley Whitford [as Josh Lyman] got there first ;o)
...though he may soon be joined by John Green and Mark Sasso... only the time will tell!
-E
Showing posts with label Aaron Sorkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aaron Sorkin. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Eli's Coming
To My Youngers,
I'm not superstitious. Not really actually superstitious, though I do toss spilled salt over my shoulder, knock on wood, and leave the theatre when I accidentally say Macbeth.... whats the harm? Its fun taking part in traditions, and tried and true superstitions are fun. They are part of a larger mythology, a collective mythology that brings people together. Like loving Doctor Who or singing the Fresh Prince theme-song in a foreign land, some things just make you feel like a part of the universe, they stick with you that way.
However there's a different kind of superstition that I do find incredibly intriguing: the superstition of coincidence.
Now I don't take this too seriously- I don't plan my life around whether or not a light turns green or if I hear a certain song on the radio, but I do enjoy having my own little set of coincidences (at least partially self manufactured, I'm sure) that work together to make the world seem like an ever so slightly more magical place. Nothing has this effect more than re-discovering a long-forgotten personal mythology and suddenly seeing it everywhere. My latest is Eli.
Eli's Coming. Yes from the Three Dog Night song, but for me from Sports Night. Its one of those phrases that seeped into my brain and was something I said long after I remembered where it had come from.
Dan Rydell: Eli is something bad, a darkness.
Casey McCall: "Eli's coming. Hide your heart, girl." Eli is a inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
Dan Rydell: I know I'm getting the song wrong. But, when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.
The wind is blowing in from from the west, Eli's Coming. The birds are sitting on the wire, Eli's Coming. Your pets are acting weird, Eli's Coming. General strangeness with a side-order of odd, Eli's Coming. Its thunderstorms and stroppy moods, stubbing your toe and thinking fuzzy. Its tornadoes at the drive-in. Its nine different kinds of weather in a day. Its Eli.
Eli may have started out as a darkness, but over the years its become for me more about the feeling of impending Big Change. An epic shift in mood or weather or perspective or or or just... life.
On the last-day-of-my-twenties Eli was everywhere. In the wind, in the snow (in April!), in the radio, in the sneezing cats, even in friends being cavity searched at the border (I think that one was the weirdest). Eli. Marking the day as one preceding change. A day to remember.
So I went with it, I absorbed all the weirdness and enjoyed every second of it. I talked a lot and listened a lot and laughed a lot and drew and drank and decided to get a tattoo. One I had been planning for a long time (a story for another post), but one I had been putting off for equally as long for a million incredibly common and suddenly not-good-enough reasons. K has a few tattoos, and I talked to her and decided I would go visit her and get it done by her friend. Now I was already really sure about this tattoo, but of course I was a little anxious about the placement and the exactly what it was too look like and, I'll admit it, the pain... then K says "Oh it'll be fine, she's really really good. And by her I mean my tattoo artist friend. Eli."
Yep, Eli. Eli the tattoo Artist. Eli the tattoo Artist who is going to do the tattoo that I decided to get on the last-day-of-my-twenties, my Eli day. Even if that doesn't mean is was meant to be, its still pretty frickin' weird, and that enough for me!
So every time big change is on the horizon, every time there's a day full of coincidence, every time there's a storm, or a feeling, or a shift in the wind, despite what anyone tries to tell me, I know its Eli.
Sometimes things stick with you that way.
-E
I'm not superstitious. Not really actually superstitious, though I do toss spilled salt over my shoulder, knock on wood, and leave the theatre when I accidentally say Macbeth.... whats the harm? Its fun taking part in traditions, and tried and true superstitions are fun. They are part of a larger mythology, a collective mythology that brings people together. Like loving Doctor Who or singing the Fresh Prince theme-song in a foreign land, some things just make you feel like a part of the universe, they stick with you that way.
However there's a different kind of superstition that I do find incredibly intriguing: the superstition of coincidence.
Now I don't take this too seriously- I don't plan my life around whether or not a light turns green or if I hear a certain song on the radio, but I do enjoy having my own little set of coincidences (at least partially self manufactured, I'm sure) that work together to make the world seem like an ever so slightly more magical place. Nothing has this effect more than re-discovering a long-forgotten personal mythology and suddenly seeing it everywhere. My latest is Eli.
Eli's Coming. Yes from the Three Dog Night song, but for me from Sports Night. Its one of those phrases that seeped into my brain and was something I said long after I remembered where it had come from.
Dan Rydell: Eli is something bad, a darkness.
Casey McCall: "Eli's coming. Hide your heart, girl." Eli is a inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
Dan Rydell: I know I'm getting the song wrong. But, when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.
The wind is blowing in from from the west, Eli's Coming. The birds are sitting on the wire, Eli's Coming. Your pets are acting weird, Eli's Coming. General strangeness with a side-order of odd, Eli's Coming. Its thunderstorms and stroppy moods, stubbing your toe and thinking fuzzy. Its tornadoes at the drive-in. Its nine different kinds of weather in a day. Its Eli.
Eli may have started out as a darkness, but over the years its become for me more about the feeling of impending Big Change. An epic shift in mood or weather or perspective or or or just... life.
On the last-day-of-my-twenties Eli was everywhere. In the wind, in the snow (in April!), in the radio, in the sneezing cats, even in friends being cavity searched at the border (I think that one was the weirdest). Eli. Marking the day as one preceding change. A day to remember.
So I went with it, I absorbed all the weirdness and enjoyed every second of it. I talked a lot and listened a lot and laughed a lot and drew and drank and decided to get a tattoo. One I had been planning for a long time (a story for another post), but one I had been putting off for equally as long for a million incredibly common and suddenly not-good-enough reasons. K has a few tattoos, and I talked to her and decided I would go visit her and get it done by her friend. Now I was already really sure about this tattoo, but of course I was a little anxious about the placement and the exactly what it was too look like and, I'll admit it, the pain... then K says "Oh it'll be fine, she's really really good. And by her I mean my tattoo artist friend. Eli."
Yep, Eli. Eli the tattoo Artist. Eli the tattoo Artist who is going to do the tattoo that I decided to get on the last-day-of-my-twenties, my Eli day. Even if that doesn't mean is was meant to be, its still pretty frickin' weird, and that enough for me!
So every time big change is on the horizon, every time there's a day full of coincidence, every time there's a storm, or a feeling, or a shift in the wind, despite what anyone tries to tell me, I know its Eli.
Sometimes things stick with you that way.
-E
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