- Classic sitcom television
- A comfortable basement full of crafts
- "Friends"
- The Sims
- YA novels by Meg Cabot
- Storytelling classes
- Almost every 1/2-hour live-action comedy currently on TV
- Almost every stand-up special on Netflix and Spotify
- Unrealistic social expectations
Instructions
1. Grow up in a family that doesn't limit the amount of TV you watch.
2. In your formative years, read vigorously. Read what you want.
2. Spend your childhood playing games that encourage a God complex, build story-writing skills, and create unrealistic social expectations. (Lookin' right at ya, Sims.)
4. Choose one of the greatest sitcoms of all time to be the first TV show with which you fall head over heels in love. Space out the entire 10-season box set over a span of 6 years, planned so that you watch the series finale-- a culturally historic finale whose outcome you manage to keep secret from you the whole 5 years since the show ended-- of a show titled "Friends" with all of your very best friends a week before your high school graduation. Fail to recognize the overbearing significance you've placed on the emotional ending of your favorite show, about friends, watched with your best friends right before you're all about to leave each other.
5. Don't watch TV in college. Or much in high school, really. You've got more important things to do, and it will wait.
6. Take a storytelling class as part of your theatre major-- which is another way of saying, "use your already ultra-active imagination to add more narrative to your already dramatic and/or exaggerated life."
7. Binge only on the shows you truly love and care about during holiday breaks from college. This is how you'll find out who you really are.
8. Start watching (and listening to) everything once you're done with college. You've got a lot to catch up on! End up watching only what you like (remember, you've found out who you really are) within a week.
9. Listen to or watch as much stand-up comedy as possible, wherever you can find it. It provides great insight on the human experience.
10. Read female writer/actor/improvisor/comedian memoirs that change your perspective on writing, women, comedy, and the world. Try to figure out how to meld Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler into one human... but don't stress when you can't think of one yet, because this list excludes your personal soul hero, Kelly Ripa, so it's pointless.
11. Watch the bad sitcoms because it's great to learn what doesn't work-- and they could end up Seinfeld-ing the shit out their show and become a sensation!
12. Obsess over a new, fairly unknown sitcom because it's shot multi-cam and the 2 leads were already friends so their chemistry is insane and they shot a live episode that blew apart how you think about comedy and TV and they announced that their 3rd season will be entirely live. Realize that you've gained a vocabulary for sitcoms and lost a few days.
12. Obsess over a new, fairly unknown sitcom because it's shot multi-cam and the 2 leads were already friends so their chemistry is insane and they shot a live episode that blew apart how you think about comedy and TV and they announced that their 3rd season will be entirely live. Realize that you've gained a vocabulary for sitcoms and lost a few days.
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| Fridays 8/7c, NBC: be there. I'm not being paid by NBC but I'll gladly become a promoter if that position exists. |
13. Ingest storytelling and comedy podcasts on the go. Inevitably start crafting your own story in your head when you take off your headphones. Get way deep in stand-up comedian Pete Holme's podcast "You Made It Weird," where, in the 3rd act, he always asks about God. Indulge in the fact that the comedians & actors getting interviewed are people, too-- kind of like how you're an actor trying to do comedy and you are also a person. You aren't trying to make people laugh all day, are you? No. You have opinions on death and God and family, don't you? Yes. You're seemingly super chill, too, aren't you-- aren't you?!?!
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| Wha--... Pssh. |
A few months ago, I'd tried to tell a close friend about my obsessive tendency to write in my head: when I walk around, I think of dialogue-- all day. I intricately imagine conversations between myself and other "characters of my life," people who I wish I had said or could say certain things to in real life but couldn't or can't. The only way I can fall asleep is by crafting feel-good scenes with pleasant people I know. I write so many romantic or relationship-based scenarios in my head that I worry if I'm confusing fact from fiction, altering my real life perceptions of people. It's exhausting, creepy, and generally unproductive, since I never even end up writing down some of the great dialogue I think of-- and, uh, yeah, there's some good stuff going on up there! It's almost subconscious and I can't stop.
She had no idea what I was talking about.
However, the other day I found someone who did-- because she does it, too! This friend asked, "Did you watch a lot of TV growing up?" YES. Oh, man, I have known that I have had a huge romantic comedy complex for years, but I never connected it to having a well-rounded television education!! My parents were not "screen time" parents (ugh), so my sister and I had, and still have, an incredibly healthy relationship with TV-- WOAH-K, I'm bordering on a whole 'nother topic you don't want me to get into.
I watched TV while I scrapbooked, crafted, and continued to be the all-around coolest kid in my school, all in my basement at weird hours of the day. This meant I watched tons of repeats, thus a score of old, educationally solid classics: Gilligan's Island, I Love Lucy, The Facts of Life, All in the Family, Family Matters, Three's Company, The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss, Cheers, The Nanny, Saved by the Bell; and also Sister Sister, Clarissa Explains It All, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, & Full House (reluctant to put it on the "great" list, but yet here it is). Plus, repeats of a lot of then-current, bad to mediocre shows: Reba, What I Like About You, 7th Heaven (admittedly not a sitcom but screwed me up just the same), Brotherly Love, According to Jim, 8 Simple Rules, damn Disney sitcoms. And, finally, just as important as the actual classics, I watched repeats upon repeats of contemporary classics: Boy Meets World, That 70's Show, Will & Grace, Scrubs, and, the holy grail of sitcoms, Friends. (You can disagree with me. That's fine. There are enough people to agree with me that I am ensured you don't count.)
"Seinfeld" or no, my understanding of the world was largely formed by TV sitcoms. The shows listed above are only the shows I watched a lot of-- so there was even more TV watching going on. Everything I knew about sex came from "Friends," which was a pretty racy show for a 7th grader to obsess over.
On "Friends," I learned people had sex on the first date. When I started watching "New Girl" almost 10 years later, I learned that you should expect it on the 3rd date.
According to most sitcoms, you fall in love with your friends. Your best friends lives either in your building or on your block. You can consider it a relationship after one date. You know, super accurate conceptions of all types of relationships. Other than that, I got my life lessons from books. Up until required high school reading, I chose books much under my reading level but much on top of my favorite genre: romantic or situational comedy (obviously from the YA section, obviously the obnoxious rich girl series "The Clique"). Hey, in case you haven't guessed: I was shy and spent much of the time when I wasn't at theatre or choir rehearsal, piano lessons, or volunteering somewhere... at home. I was an introverted homebody who liked watching, reading, or writing stories. Some were in my head, but a lot were on TV. These stories shaped my social expectations-- emphasizing the romantic and the dramatic.
Another question my friend asked the other day was, "Did you play the Sims?" Um, was I ALIVE in the early 00's?!
"I could go on for hours about how the Sims screwed me up," she said. Her words may have been "ruined my life;" I don't know, I don't have a great memory for extremes. Still, I totally get where she's coming from: for years, I created perfect, archetypal people in perfect houses with unlimited money (you know I used those cheats!!) and followed a formulaic sequence of events in order to get Person A to fall in love with Person B, get married, and have a perfect family. Whenever I didn't want them to be perfect-- because that's never interesting-- I'd write in conflict. I'd choose which dial to turn a little bit too far in the wrong direction. I was playing God. And when I wasn't doing it, I'd watch my sister do it, witnessing how every move she made affected her fictional world. Satirist and my best friend Fran Lebowitz says it best:
When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree... Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.
My friend (not Fran, the other one) and I communed about the annoyance and exhaustion of constantly writing and directing mini-plays in our heads. Strangely enough, we also agreed on a powerful yet maybe contradictory stance: creating a narrative for your life is stupid.
Yeah. First got into this one through that 3rd act, "the God part," in Pete Holme's podcast. Creating a narrative for your life is unproductive, overly consuming, self-centered if not narcissistic-- overall not good. I know this because I do it! Everyone does it! It's where you're the star of the movie of your life, and since it's your life it's the most important movie in the world (your world). You think of others in your life as characters in your movie-- leads, supporting, even extras. Everything connects, so everything matters, no matter how small. For example,
I... can't.
I admit I'm a culprit of the self-centered metanarrative, but now I at least recognize and squash it immediately. Finding out that the wallet I thought was stolen in New York City for 2 years, which I'd blamed for everything bad that happened in those 2 years, was probably never even lost but simply hiding on the M100 bus the whole time? That pretty much squelched narrative for me. Oh, and standing out in the middle of the ocean, balancing on tiny reef rocks at low tide on a beach in Washington? A stellar reminder that nothing matters.
"Nothing matters" isn't "I'm going to go jump off a bridge." It is "Not every little thing in my life is a big deal or greatly consequential. Whether or not I text this guy today or whether or not I quit my sucky day job next week, these reef rocks will still be here; and in a few hours they will be completely covered in water; and tomorrow morning they'll be here for a human to stand on, in the middle of the ocean. Whether I'm there or not."
Yeah. First got into this one through that 3rd act, "the God part," in Pete Holme's podcast. Creating a narrative for your life is unproductive, overly consuming, self-centered if not narcissistic-- overall not good. I know this because I do it! Everyone does it! It's where you're the star of the movie of your life, and since it's your life it's the most important movie in the world (your world). You think of others in your life as characters in your movie-- leads, supporting, even extras. Everything connects, so everything matters, no matter how small. For example,
Those 4 minutes late that you left from your apartment this morning landed you on the train platform at the exact moment for you to run into that guy from that party this past Saturday that you weren't even going to go to until you felt too sick to fly home for the weekend, and the only reason you got sick was because you drank out of a weird blind date's cup even though you knew he was coughing, but now you've got the Train Platform Guy's phone number AND you see it has the same zip code of your best friend, who actually set you up with Sick Blind Date Guy, since she's been encouraging you to take risks and meet new people-- like Train Platform Guy!-- and it's a sign, it's a sign, it's a SIGN, IT'S A SIGN, THANK GOD YOU HAD TO TAKE AN EXTRA LONG POOP THIS MORNING!!!
I... can't.
I admit I'm a culprit of the self-centered metanarrative, but now I at least recognize and squash it immediately. Finding out that the wallet I thought was stolen in New York City for 2 years, which I'd blamed for everything bad that happened in those 2 years, was probably never even lost but simply hiding on the M100 bus the whole time? That pretty much squelched narrative for me. Oh, and standing out in the middle of the ocean, balancing on tiny reef rocks at low tide on a beach in Washington? A stellar reminder that nothing matters.
"Nothing matters" isn't "I'm going to go jump off a bridge." It is "Not every little thing in my life is a big deal or greatly consequential. Whether or not I text this guy today or whether or not I quit my sucky day job next week, these reef rocks will still be here; and in a few hours they will be completely covered in water; and tomorrow morning they'll be here for a human to stand on, in the middle of the ocean. Whether I'm there or not."
So, I constantly write in my head but squelch any attempt to connect those scenes in a grandiose way. That's a huge step from the giant romantic comedy that I've for so long thought my life needed to be, thanks to my formative social education in TV sitcoms (and 7th Heaven). I really do watch only 1/2-hour comedies, so if someone can get me to enjoy watching movies or hour-long dramas I will pay them generous amounts of money/cookies.
But, at the end of the day, isn't it great that I still sometimes see my life as a sitcom? Because I know that's what I want to write! And act in! Oh boy, am I no sketch writer; I will never be joke joke joke joke joke. And other than sitcoms or romantic comedies, I latch onto comedic essays, non-fiction, memoirs by female comedians. You know what none of these memoirs or books on romance do? Create narrative. These ladies do not weave together some fantastical, romantic psychoanalytic narrative to explain the people they are today. They hone in on the most entertaining, meaningful, hilarious, important, or accessible topics and moments, and, while these individual essays all speak to each other, they aren't dramatically attached. These women have some great perspective with a "don't sweat the small stuff" attitude. They focus on staying true to yourself, working hard, and loving large. Without heavy or unnecessary meaning. They, like the reader, just want to get to the good part: what's true. And that also tends to be what's funny.
I have no solution to this problem of writing in my head, except that maybe I should start writing it down. Strangely enough, that dialogue is actually more dramatic indie film than 30-min sitcom... I'll have to deal with that when I get to it. But I am looking forward to finishing these 52 recipes, not only to be done with this 26-month-long 12-month project, but also to end up with a bunch of small stuff that I personally find pretty funny-- and that adds up to a whole lot of nothing.
But, at the end of the day, isn't it great that I still sometimes see my life as a sitcom? Because I know that's what I want to write! And act in! Oh boy, am I no sketch writer; I will never be joke joke joke joke joke. And other than sitcoms or romantic comedies, I latch onto comedic essays, non-fiction, memoirs by female comedians. You know what none of these memoirs or books on romance do? Create narrative. These ladies do not weave together some fantastical, romantic psychoanalytic narrative to explain the people they are today. They hone in on the most entertaining, meaningful, hilarious, important, or accessible topics and moments, and, while these individual essays all speak to each other, they aren't dramatically attached. These women have some great perspective with a "don't sweat the small stuff" attitude. They focus on staying true to yourself, working hard, and loving large. Without heavy or unnecessary meaning. They, like the reader, just want to get to the good part: what's true. And that also tends to be what's funny.
I have no solution to this problem of writing in my head, except that maybe I should start writing it down. Strangely enough, that dialogue is actually more dramatic indie film than 30-min sitcom... I'll have to deal with that when I get to it. But I am looking forward to finishing these 52 recipes, not only to be done with this 26-month-long 12-month project, but also to end up with a bunch of small stuff that I personally find pretty funny-- and that adds up to a whole lot of nothing.
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