smalltimore

I can't believe it has been over a month since I've posted anything. This spring has been completely INSANE, though in good ways. Perhaps I am having a mid-life crisis of sorts. So many things seem to be changing.

For example, I hardly ever watch Law & Order anymore. I don't watch much television anyway, but a guilty pleasure is this strange crush I have on Jack McCoy.  It is not so much Sam Waterston, who plays McCoy, but the character McCoy that I am attracted to. I know, I know, he is almost old enough to be my father and he has those big, bushy, muppet eyebrows, and most of the time he is a pain in the ass and sometimes he is a flat-out jerk. It is not his looks so much, or what he has to say or even how he says it. It is what is behind what he says - PASSION.

Even when he is wrong, I can't hold it against him. He thinks he is right, he thinks he is doing things for the right reasons, he is always trying to set things right, by any means necessary.

"If I told you you make a passionate argument, would you hold it against me?"

The brilliant thing about the writing on that show is how much they hold back. So that when you catch a small glimpse of how human the characters are, when we are allowed to see the chinks in their armor, it is a delicious secret. My favorite moments watching Jack are at the end of a show where he turns out to be wrong, or to have bent the rules a little too far, and someone dares to point this out to him. The look on his face, and sometimes even the words from his mouth, are simply, "...And??" So I was wrong, I did what I thought was right. Sometimes I can see that he is sorry, that he feels badly, that he wants to apologize, that he is dying to apologize. But he can't. He doesn't own the necessary vocabulary.

My newest guilty pleasure is watching old episodes of, "Northern Exposure," on DVD. Remember that show? The sexual tension between Joel and Maggie is practically edible. It is interesting to watch the episodes in order. You can tell when the writers would think, "Okay, we have to lay off this for a little bit and give the other characters some face time." I'll sit through those shows, but I am just waiting for them to get back on point. Give me heated debates between people that obviously want to see each other naked but never do, that's what I say. That's good television.

I think I am finally learning that it is sexier to be disagreeable. Years ago my brother dated this hot-blooded Puerto Rican woman who would fly into a Spanish-spewing rage every now and then. "She's crazy. You know this," I told him once. He smiled to himself satisfactorily. "Yea..." he said. "But it's never boring."

I don't mind debating, and playing devil's advocate is my forte (it's a Gemini thing), but arguing for the sake of arguing seems to me a waste of time. Perhaps I should re-think that, though. If I picked up the habit, I could try out this new line I just thought of,

"If I told you you make a strong point..."