August 26th, 2010

My Top 10 Favourite Sitcoms

I have thought of several nice litsy posts I could write, but the last one inspired me to think about sitcoms all the time for the past couple days, and I love them, and I do think they were very formative for me. You’ll see on the list below that all my faves were on, new or in syndication, between 1987 and 1997, my prime tv watching years. Maybe the reason I am fine with almost never seeing any tv now is that I had my fill before I graduated high school–I think I saw almost every non-cable half-hour show at least once in those years. And it was great! These are the highlights:

1. M*A*S*H I had to put this one first, because it was probably the best show, artistically and dramatically, that I’ve ever. It was, as far as I can tell, pretty accurate and gory in its depiction of the Korean conflict, though occasionally the racial depictions of actual Korean folks got a little hokey (it was the 70s). But in truth, it was Hawkeye Pierce sneaking around in his red velour bathrobe, about to play some crazy joke on Charles Winchester the 3rd that really got me. I loved the show to such an extent that the movie didn’t floor me as much (it wasn’t the same as the show!), nor did the book. Although I’m sure both are actually very good.

2. WKRP in Cincinnati Like I say, M*A*S*H was the best show, but WKRP probably holds the most tender place in my heart. I really really loved Johnny Fever, and in lighthearted moments still occasionally address my friends as “fellow babies.” The episode where John and Venus do the drinking-and-driving reflex game is probably my all-time favourite episode of anything ever. And the “With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly” one is a close second.

3. Twitch City According to Wikipedia, this one aired in a time when I didn’t even have a tv, but I know I saw all of the first season, which just goes to show how special it was. Don McKellar being crazy and antisocial in Kensington Market made my impression of of Toronto long before I ever lived here. And there was a cat! There was a second season a few years later, but though I by then had a tv, it didn’t get CBC very well (what?) and though I tried to watch it anyway, it was so fuzzy I really have no idea what happened.

4. Sports Night Again, this seems to have been on during a period I didn’t have a tv–I think maybe my parents video-taped it for me??? (We were a tv loving family back then, what can I say?) It was Aaron Sorkin’s first television show, and it had a perfect first season of tight banter, high anxiety and even somehow made sports interesting. Then it had a second season where Sorkin gave in to his lady-hating demons and made Dana (Felicity Huffman) a big flake, but even then, there were still more hits than misses.

5. Murphy Brown Much as I loved the tart dialogue and Murphy’s sniping at her rotating crew of secretaries, what I remember most about his show is how *warm* it was. Murphy and Frank and Jim were old-guard friends and really cared about each other, in a gruff snarky way. Oh, then there was Elden, the housepainter–I hearted him, too. Dan Quayle was crazy to attack this show.

6. Newsradio Are you starting to sense a theme here? I like newsroom shows. But seriously, Phil Hartman and Dave Foley could have been alone in a canoe and this would still have been funny, and with the supporting cast it was pretty unstoppable. Andy Dick is a very very annoying actor, but the first few seasons even he was funny, due to being extremely tightly reined in. I have heard that John Lovitz was also very funny when he replaced Phil Hartman, but after Hartman’s death I didn’t have it in me to continue watching.

7. The Golden Girls I don’t care what anybody says, this show was revelatory. Imagine that women in their 60s could have a show all to themselves: no husbands, very little screen time for the kids (maybe once a season), not even any Important Social Issues for them to Face Bravely. Just hijinx and cheesecake. I distinctly remember Dorothy hitting Rose in the face when she said something dumb–ha! For proof of this show’s historical appeal, ask any woman in North America what Golden Girl she’s going to be like when she gets old. She might not tell you, but you’ll be able to see in her eyes that she knows.

8. Mad about You It is very hard to make a sitcom about just a couple–the only other example that is even close that I can think of is Anything but Love (yes, Richard Lewis and Jamie Lee Curtis, what the hell, I Know). But Paul and Jamie were genuinely sweet together, and yet a realistic scrappy couple with jobs and parents and a dog (Murray!) I loved the scenes were they discussed the problem of the day/episode while sniffing things out of the fridge to see if they could eat them. And Hank Azaria as the dog walker–heart heart heart!! (I did not watch the final seasons with the adultery and the baby and the high drama–blech!)

9. Roseanne Didn’t see this one coming, did you? If you go back and watch the early episodes and try to clear your mind of prejudice, you might just be stunned at how good it was. Seriously, John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf are first rate actors; Sarah Gilbert too. And Barr was pretty funny on the show (I am told she’s actually a horrible person, but in tvland, who cares?) And the later seasons had Billy Galecki and Glenn Quinn (who is now dead, so we need to cherish what footage we have of him)! Again, I didn’t watch the very late seasons, when they won the lottery, or some such nonsense. Also, there as a character named Becky on the show, always the weakest character, as protrayed by 2 different actors. All this annoyed me.

10. Friends Say what you will about their massive, impossible to afford NYC appartments and Jennifer Aniston’s hair–this show gave teenaged me something realistic to aspire to: life in a city with lots of friends and an interesting job and witty banter, and not necessarily a desperate striving to be married off and settled in the suburbs. The people on this show were happy to goof-off and it didn’t always make total sense (the duck and the chick?) and the Ross-Rachel plotline was laaaammmme, but tell me you didn’t chuckle when Joey put on all of Chandler’s clothing at once to punish him for hiding his underwear!!!!

11. Ok, we’re over the limit, and way past my tv years, but someone gave me a few DVDs of Arrested Development and it’s brilliant enough to overcome my anti-family-sitcom prejudices. I even liked when Buster’s hand got eaten by that seal, and I’m not usually one for violence.

This is a pretty favourite topic of mine, so I would love to hear anyone else’s list, if you have some time to kill and feel like sharing.

August 24th, 2010

Collaborations I Have Loved

With all this talk about the “How to Be Alone” video, I have strangely been thinking about times I’ve worked with others and it’s been wonderful. I am fairly decent at being alone–it would be very hard to write stories and not be–but sometimes the solo, non-social nature of writing bugs me. Sure, it’s nice to have total control over most of what I write, me being a meglomaniac and all, but sometimes it is nice to have someone to talk to about how it’s all working out.

So I’ve always been in writing groups and workshops. It helps to get feedback on my own work, as well as to see what sorts of cool stuff others are getting up to. It helps to keep the conversation about writing going with smart people I respect. Of course, I listen carefully to editors and try to really engage with them on what they think a piece needs. When someone is willing to share some of the heavy lifting of writing, I let them–it’s still mine in the end, but sometimes being drawn out of my hot little skull to a fresh perspective from someone else’s skull is wonderfully liberating.

I’ve also gotten the opportunity to take the process of collaboration farther, to actual shared writing projects. One writing group I was in collaborated on a murder-mystery anthology. I felt this was a pretty brilliant idea, and since it didn’t quite work out, I’m hoping some other group will want to steal it–do you? What we did was, we brainstormed a character and a bit of backstory, and then a scenario in which she is found dead in her apartment building. Then each of us individually wrote a short story for one other tenant in the building, in which each person had motive and opportunity for the crime. Then we were going to collaborate on a final story, revealing the true killer, but the group disbanded before that happened. I’m still rather proud of my piece, though I have to admit that without the context of its sister stories, it doesn’t make complete sense. Still it was a really fun process–everyone went in such different directions that it was really entertaining, as well as instructive to hear the stories presented every meeting.

Somewhere around then, I was also writing a satirical romance round-robin style, with about a dozen other people. A round robin is where each person writes a paragraph adding on to what’s gone before. It’s like improv in the sense that you need to work with, not against, anything you are handed when you enter: if the write of the previous paragraph says that aliens landed, and you undermine it by saying that it was a hallucination brought on by bad ham, the forward momentum and structure of the piece is imperilled–you’ve just wasted 2 paragraphs, basically. But round-robin writing is, also like improv, best suited to silliness! Our love story was hilarious, but not anything anyone could actually print or publish or even read seriously. I also don’t think it had an ending.

An even simpler–and sillier–version of such shared stories is Little Papers (Petites Papiers), a game that I think Fred introduced me to (right, Fred?) in first-year university. This is a blind round robin–you sit in a circle, each writes one part of the story folds it over and passes it on to the next person to write the next bit. We always played with 3-6 people, but I think it would be fun even with 2. Our stories had a standard structure, as follows (how many great novels can you apply this structure to?)
Woman’s name
Man’s name
Where they meet
What she says to him
What he says to her
What happens next
Somehow the results were never not funny. I think you could also play it with less structure, just sentence-sentence-sentence, but that runs the risk of, like our round robin, never ending.

The round robin and little papers exercises are probably best suited to goof-off activities for word nerds, or classroom activities to teach kids of have fun with writing and enjoy working together. As serious fictional enterprises, maybe they won’t work so well (though I’d love to hear an example where 30 people wrote the great Canadian novel in round robin or some such). And also, these are a projects where collaboration is limited: everyone creates singly and contributes, rather than creating collectively. Creating collectively, as we know from marketing campaign brainstorms, focus group film endings and themed bridal showers, often ends in inane results, no results, or hand-to-hand combat.

So the only time I ever wrote something in full collaboration with someone–no “my-part-your-part”–was with someone I have always been comfortable throwing shoes at or biting*, my younger brother. We wrote three episodes of a sitcom together a couple years ago, mainly because we both laugh at the same stuff and have the same strong opinions on how sitcoms should be. Who knows it is actually a good idea to try to write something funny with someone with a similar sense of humour; certainly, not everyone agrees with us and perhaps it would help the universality of our show to have someone on the team who did not collapse in hysterics at our elaborate clowns-at-Starbucks setup.

It wasn’t all hilarity and delicious snack items, though–ok, it was mainly. We wrote it for no particular reason except it’s nice to have an activity sometimes; basically, to entertain ourselves. That certainly worked, though we did nearly come to blows about how to turn off track changes (on Word for Mac, apparently, you just never do). But I do think it was a good exercise in making a single unified work out of two disparate views (even if the disparity is only slight). Maybe next time I’ll work someone who is not a blood relative, even someone I wouldn’t chase with a stick. The sky is the limit.

But actually, I really liked working with my brother.

*What, like you weren’t hard on your siblings?

August 21st, 2010

Toronto Tidbits

I was sitting on the edge of a planter reading outside of some random office building (I was early to meet people for coffee) and various corporate types were striding down, purposefully inhaling a cigarette in five minutes or less, then striding off. Two gents in suits, one my age, one a little older, cruised past, not smoking, and I caught just the moment in the conversation when the younger said to the elder, “I really just try to cry as little as possible.”

I found out the City of Vaughan is twinned with Sora, Italy, which seems like a nice, friendly, slightly random enterprise (until you realize how many Italian folks live in Vaughan). I also found out that Vaughan is a city–I always thought it was part of Toronto. To be fair, this week’s visit was only the second time I had ever been there. It not being part of Toronto would certainly explain why the TTC doesn’t go there, and the TTC not going there is the explanation of why I don’t go there either. It was a lovely visit–people made me tasty food, I petted an orange cat, and sang karaoke! If anyone volunteers to drive, I’ll go back–it’s likely the closest I’ll get to Sora.

I was going into my apartment building when I saw through the window a woman coming out. I stood waiting for her to open the door, rather than fumble with my keys, but when she opened it she turned awkwardly in the doorway, as if trying to block me. I reached into my bag to show her my keys–that I wasn’t a burgalar trying to sneak in–when she said in a thick Russian accent, “Excuse me, could you…?” I looked up; she had her back to me and her snug black sheath dress was about halfway zipped up. “Oh, of course,” I said, and did it up. She shot me a look between gratitude and shame, said thank you and scurried off.

If you somehow can’t be in Toronto or even Vaughan right now, but really want to be, I highly recommend you check out the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It is set in Toronto. Not Toronto-disguised-as-New York-or-Chicago, but actual unabashed Toronto. Sightings include: old-school (ie., getting rarer these days) red rocket buses, Honest Eds, Lee’s Palace, Pizza Pizza, Casa Loma, the CN Tower, etc. But, actually, even if you don’t care about TO one way or another, you should still see this movie. Unlike the very fun One Week the locational love note is just where Scott Pilgrim begins, not where it ends.

This euphoric little action movie is about a 22-year-old goober (played by the uber-goober, Michael Cera) who falls in with a cool girl with a complicated past, and has to fight her seven evil exes to win her hand. The whole movie is set up like a live-action video game: when we see Scott’s apartment for the first time, tiny letters pop up labelling each item and saying who bought it (mainly his roommate, Wallace, in an incredibly funny performance by Kieran Culkin, whom I adore without remembering ever seeing him in anything else). When Scott goes to the bathroom, a pee bar flashes full on the top of the screen, then drains to empty. And the fight scenes are bang-pow fantastic, and involve a lot of leaping and ducking and spinning; when a villain is defeated, he or she explodes into a shower of coins (Canadian coins–including toonies!)

There’s skateboarding on the stairs at Casa Loma, a show at Lee’s Palace, and lots and lots of Annex-y self-referential irony. And I personally love Michael C., but even those who don’t have pointed out that he is less annoying than usual in this pic. Oh my goodness, so much love!

August 18th, 2010

Awesomeness

I thought I pulled a muscle in my neck, but it seems to be more or less all right now.

I thought there were no more TCBYs (This Country’s Best Yoghurt) outlets in Toronto outside of movie theatre snack counters (and the above website says same) but then I found one, on Yonge just North of Isabella, on the west side. It was very exciting (and as tasty as I remember. All the yoghurt tastes like coconut, which as far as I am concerned is a bonus!)

The TCBY (yes, this is a completely separate bullet point) is inside a coffeeshop (though clearly marked from the outside). While there, I saw a man order a large chocolate-vanilla swirl from the frozen-yoghurt side, and a carrot muffin from the coffee shop side. Passing him later, I saw that he had smashed up the muffin and PUT IT IN THE BOWL. It was like ad-hoc ice-cream and cake. Genius.

Amy’s helpful guide to Retail Etiquette for Dummies (even if you are not a dummy, this is still entertaining, in a squirmy, “People sure can be jerks” way).

This awesome video that Zach Wells posted of a toddler reciting a poem from memory, and doing a darn good job of it, too!

Also on the subject of small children, an acquaintance and her husband have gone overseas to adopt a baby, and yesterday they got her! I guess I shouldn’t share their personal blog URL, but I have to tell you, people experiencing that level of happiness is pretty mindblowing.

August 17th, 2010

Kids that I once knew

I think there might be something in writers–some writers, anyway–that serves as a reasonable counterfeit of being a really nice person. I don’t think I’m a jerk or anything (usually), but the amount of time I spend listening to other people is not something I do out of generousity: I am *fascinated* by what other people say. Almost all of them (except those doing home renovations).

Actually, maybe this has less to do with being a writer and more to do with not having a television, but anyway–it’s certainly not research. Don’t worry, I’m definitely not cribbing your words and experiences for literary reproduction, not even those of drunk people at parties who tell me their sexual woes, or people on the bus who screech into their cellphones about a knife-fight at the appliance store where they work. I would never put that stuff into a story, since it already is one. I just like the narratives. And I can’t help but think that it is, in some osmotic way, good for my writing to hear a lot of different voices, a lot of different experiences, all the time. So I am able to sell myself my own personal preference as professional development, which means that I don’t have to leave the bar and go to bed early when all my friends are bitching about their jobs. Hooray!

I think this love for narrative (and other people’s business) might explain why I enjoyed high school as much as I did–when else are you so intimately associated with people you do not know. In fact, you do know them, but it’s a form of knowing that does not come again in life: teenagers are loud, theatrical, bad dissemblers, self-absorbed, and often in close proximity to each other every day, 10 months a year, for 5 years. Sometimes 12 or 13. In my school, anyway, everyone knew everything about everyone. I wasn’t even well-connected enough to hear gossip, just overhear it, and yet I knew plenty about people I’d never spoken to except to do a French assignment in pairs.

This sounds like it could lead to snark, and occasionally it did: I was pretty judgey about the girl who cried in French class because she had just realized she wasn’t wearing her bra, and in a completely different way, judgey about those who were too devoted to the crystal-growing competitions. But I was also (no one will be surprised at this) the yearbook editor: I knew *everyone’s* name, and rather liked the idea of us all being part of one thing or at least one book. I loved slotting everyone’s face into their little boxes next to whoever came before and after in the alphabet, regardless of their affiliation. Everyone together.

That sounds lame, and, oh, it probably was, but here’s the thing: I went to a *really* good high school. It was in an area where parents had the money and the time to encourage their kids’ interests, and so did the teachers. Many people were in band, as well as the school band, which was pretty outstanding (FYI, I played flute, and was not outstanding). People acted, wrote, went to OFSA championships and did power-tumbling. And even the non-participants, the people I couldn’t coral on picture day (punished them by running happy faces in their boxes) were the stars of their own lives. I am firmly convinced that most people in my school were interesting, and almost all were very good at at least something.

I was really looking forward to finding out how it all turned out for everyone. I am *not* sure how I was planning on actuallizing that. I am still friends with my closest hs friends, but who stays in touch with random acquaintances, lab partners, and the girl who had the locker next time mine and a goth boyfriend. Aside from a brief misfire right after I graduated from university, I never lived in the area again so I couldn’t run into folks at the supermarket, and since I’m not actually *from* the wealthy suburb where I went to school, neither do my parents.

For a while, my lovingly tended narratives of my schoolmates had nothing to go on–did the bandboys take it on the road? Did university finally pose a real challenge for the science smarties? Did that girl ever find her bra? I pestered friends and acquaintances for who they’d run into in parking lots, gyms, sports bars, whatever, and asked questions like, “Did she/he look happy?”

And then came Facebook. People ask what’s the point of “friending” people you aren’t friends with in real life, and I say that’s the point! I have a lot of FB friends who I talk to in my actual life via email or phone or actually in person, and if FB suddenly limited the # of friends we could have, those guys would be the first to go! If I can talk to you elsewhere, I don’t need you on FB. But there are also plenty of FB friends on my newsfeed who just friended me because we are in the same high-school network–we have spoken since the 1990s, but I see their funny status updates, their wedding pictures, their workplaces (urgh, many people don’t post that–so annoying!) I get to continue their narratives, even though most of them probably barely remember me and would be puzzled by this post.

I eat the same thing for lunch almost every day, and if I liked you once, I’ll probably always like you unless you do something terrible like try to eat my cat. I like stories, and I always want to know what happens next. I think that’s actually a human instinct, not just a writerly one, and I suspect it’s part of what makes FB so popular.

August 14th, 2010

Pivot launches season 3

I was so happy to be back at Pivot for the beginning of season 3 (I also read at the launch of season 1), with brand new host Sachiko Murakami (top left) and her new co-host Angela Hibbs (sadly not pictured). Fellow readers were the fabulous Jill Battson (top right) and Mat Laporte (bottom left). That’s me, bottom right, in my new summer dress!

I heart the Press Club, their bartenders, and all the wonderful folks that made it out to the reading. It wasn’t even all that hot!

August 12th, 2010

Me on the web

Every time an issue of TNQ comes out, they ask all the writers what they are reading and then post the answers online–fascinating stuff for the literary voyeur, or those just looking for suggestions, and fun for a literary exhibitionist like me to participate in.

And my blog post about the villains (again) is up on the Maisonneuve blog, if you missed it the first time around.

August 10th, 2010

Elvis Costello: Totally Messing with Me

So I am having a complete meltdown tonight because (brace yourself): there are TWO “American without Tears,” which is a song, well, two songs by Elvis Costello. And then I knew, the one I thought was the only one and wrote about in a short story once (as you probably do not recall, it was “Chilly Girl”) is the “other” one, some sort of freak song or “Twilight Version” Costello seems to have recorded the following year and stuck on *Blood and Chocolate* as a bonus track for the version released in the UK. The version it seems people actually *know* was on side 2 of King of America and is completely different lyrics, different instrumentation…

Don’t panic, the scene in “Chilly Girl” makes sense no matter which version you are thinking of, as they have the same time sig and basically the same melody. But nothing else makes sense any more–my brain can’t process this. It’s like finding out your boyfriend has a nice clone you can take to parties if you want. Ok, it’s nothing like that, but it’s still really really weird.

I actually like the “new” version a lot, too, but I guess my roots will forever remain with the Twilight version. And so I leave you with…

December 1965 in Caracas
When Arnie LaFlamme took his piece of the pie
When he packed up the casino chips, the IOU and the abacus
And switched off the jukebox in a “A Fool Such As I”

He was a leg man who was open to offers
But he couldn’t get her off his mind as he passed the tourist office
And as he entertained himself singing just like Sammy Davis Junior
He toyed with a trip to Miami

…

Swoon. Costello is totally a short-story writer in musical form.

Litsy Stuff

A few things:

Via Scott, a list of literary pickup lines created in anticipation of a new dating website based around book preferences. The website plan is dubious, I think, but the lines are pretty funny, especially the one about Dan Brown.

I actually liked the music of Library Voices before I knew their perhaps overcute name. But they are truly both bookish (they have a song called “Kundera on the Dancefloor”) and unpretentious (another called “Drinking Games,” which I think is my favourite).

The new issue of the New Quarterly came last night, the On the Road issue, and it came with a PRESENT!! A bonus little magazine that’s *not* about writing, which I am much looking forward to reading. And there’s also a story by me, which I am quite pleased about too. But mainly the present!

I’m reading with Jill Battson and Mat Laporte tomorrow night at Pivot at the Press Club. I’ll be reading something from Road Trips as a kind of unofficial delayed launch, and I’ll have a few copies to sell, too. And I’ll be so excited that Pivot has reopened for the season!

August 8th, 2010

The only freedom is choice

After working myself into a mini-rage, I’ve calmed down and decided not to expend many blog inches over Leah McLaren’s column in the Globe yesterday. It’s about a study she read on primary childcare. McLaren’s point, illustrated by this study plus “the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of [her] peers” that it is “absolutely not…good for the mental development and behaviour of most new mothers” to stay home with their children.

Of course, the study doesn’t say that–the study says the kids will probably be fine whether care is provided by mom or someone else, provided the family is pretty stable. What I might draw from this is that adults need to make the best decisions they can given the specifics of their own lives, be they financial, cultural, intellectual, whatever. What McLaren draws is that since mothering is “unpaid labour” and if you are home all day you are “[l]ess able to make small talk at a cocktail parties,” call the daycare centre and get yourself a job.

I guess I haven’t met them, but I doubt McLaren’s peers constitute a statistically sound sampling of all economic, geographic, social and cultural demographics. Many people want many things from their lives. A choice is a choice: in 2010, women don’t have the “freedom” to have careers; we have the freedom to do anything we want, provided we can make it work within the context of our own lives and loved ones. The quality of the entertainment we provide at cocktail parties never enters into it.

I don’t know exactly why this article made me see red; I don’t have kids and this isn’t an issue I’m dealing with. Maybe the idea that there is any one right answer for any aspect of life–hurrah for the pluralistic society! And then there’s the fact that my mom stayed home with me, after a fascinating career that involved, among other things, teaching a university course on the sociology of women. I am happy to think it was an educated choice. Both my grandmothers worked, as did at least two of my great-grandmothers. You can bet they didn’t do it so they’d have amusing anecdotes to tell at parties. We all make the best decisions we can with the lives we have.