Why Some TV is Good For You: House, MD

All the stuff I feel like we should all be talking about, thinking about...or at least wondering about: it all gets covered, and profoundly.  From what I hear people say, it seems a lot of people just don't get it.  They see the surface: a grouchy, mean smartypants doctor who pops vicodin.

Holy, it is so much more.  That is merely the thinnest rice-paper wrapping of everything that matters to humans and why we're alive. Call me ridiculous; I speak the truth. This show is (was) the sickness. Ha. (get it?)

Of course I sound like a teenybopper because of my beyond-enthusiastic level. Why it is so good and why I declare this even though I'm self-conscious enough to know I most likely will be dismissed as one of many idiots (homage) raving about some show like Glee.  (It doesn't really matter, I guess, but I don't want to be put in that category.  I don't watch Glee. And I'm not talking about for-enjoyment types of shows/movies/books right now.  Distraction is a different thing.)

I must explain why House is really really just important and good and proof of what many excellent minds working together can produce.  Like, how the composite of a bunch of smart people--collective mind? communal mind?-- can sometimes produce something near mystical, or at least really awesome.  For physical examples, let's say the Great Wall, the Empire State Building, the mystery of the Pyramids.  I'm just speaking of those "things" that are accomplished by many, that cannot be done by one [wo]man.  We just don't get enough circumstances or opportunities or nights in college to really explore what's really important.  I rationalize that I re-watch episodes multiple times because it's what I crave thinking about, presented to me so beautifully, compactly, avec Hugh Laurie (and Chase--who really does play the violin in real life, you can see it [again, for real] in the "Swan Song" final show--why the f*** would really really pretty people learn the violin?? another discussion)---it's a ~43 minute chunk of your life to think about human beings, what is important to us, what we hide from others and from ourselves, what we truly think about death. And in the most witty, intelligent, of-the-world (but not cold) entertainment form. It's more spiritual and thoughtful than Deepak but cleverly addresses the Things with a bright, questioning approach---its layers seem to speak directly to the people who are sincere in their desire to understand and make their lives somehow meaningful and true, but without running to a monastery (which is an option often discussed) to do it.

When I was a few years into my job (just out of school and in the non-changing existence of having a good job that is supposed to be the fulfillment of all your life's striving so far--no big thing) I watched and re-watched the first few seasons of House compulsively.  I was so so miserable and lonely and stuck and was supposed to be lucky and happy and thriving.  It was the worst time, but I couldn't complain and unfortunately my habit became shutting down and not talking for days.  (This is a terrible confession, but most people I know..well, they define me as a flake.  I feel so bad about this.  But I couldn't do anything about it. It was a stuckness I can't even talk about.)  Anyway, the things/people I could identify with were few and it was easier to just identify with created characters.  (At the time.  I'm still sort of a shut-in, but can fool people by acting very social too.  It's confusing to me.  When I took Myers-Briggs, I was exactly half extrovert and half introvert.  I took it twice because I thought the result made me seem wishywashy.  I am still having identity-type problems. It's not luxurious at my age; I thought thinking about it was indulgent for yeeeears, but it's not, I assure you. Perhaps it comes easily to most people? To me, it is difficult to get the gist of myself.)

I am not going to go into that further; it causes me to feel terrible and let's say we'll bury the Dead Past (Wodehouse).  Incidentally, the other thing I watched until the dvds were destroyed was Jeeves and Wooster (Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry version)---but that was just enjoyment.

House, I watched, to survive.  This is not hyperbole.  One night I crafted a letter to the producers of the show thanking them for making this miracle show that allowed me to address all the scary (SCARY) aspects and layers of being alive in a sincere-to-yourself way---and making the case for living and not being careless with your life (believe me, I understand and still have problems with recklessness, and I apologize those that were affected by this--when you're depressed sometimes it's hard to care about yourself and you put yourself in potentially dangerous situations....Another discussion.) That draft of a letter was just middle-of-the-night silliness, I thought, and was embarrassed (why? who cares?) but now I think these moments of doing something you feel strongly motivated to do should be done without worrying so much about everyone/everything--I mean, it doesn't matter to those it doesn't matter to, and they can write me off, but maybe it will matter to a few people it will matter to, and that's good enough--or at least, a pretty good thing.

I will stop, even though I just said all that stuff, because I might stray into future-regret material.  People (me) are hypocrites.  Rationale is: it's hard to really do what you want/ think is good/ share what you feel --without worrying about those other people or pesky future me's (they are the worst) who will judge and ridicule.  Here's another I will regret tomorrow:

I think "twee" is the funniest word....

 *Intermission*

I ate some barely stir-fried vegetables and watched a scary movie (bad for digestion) since I wrote the above.
"Twee"--that had nothing to do with anything, sorry.  The word that House likes is "PITHY." House says it about every 10 episodes...

Maybe it's not good to have the world of the House character be the world you like to hang out in.  I have to admit I was born on the saddish side.  My grandma said I had a sad face.  Because my mom made me practice too much.

I keep hoping I'm snapping out of it. Apparently, I'm "languishing"---but that's way too romantic to describe it.  I'm in pain pretty much all the time.  I guess you can see how I can identify.  (with House).
So, identifying so well with a miserable person who somehow helps people reconcile with death...makes you maybe feel less lonely? But then, it's so comforting to be alone sometimes--or just not talking is safer, or easier, or less likely to cause me emotional-type pain, which you often can't see coming, because I can't handle emotional pain on top of physical pain.  Isolation is more like Insulation, at least for me.  I hope you understand.  I truly care about most all of my friends on FB, honestly and sincerely, I just can't reach out and apologize and explain (talk about it all) to everyone, or even a certain few individuals I almost CRAVE, wish to see...very very badly...because I miss them so much.  My shoulder hurts and it's caused me to be such an unbearable flake.  I can't talk about it ! (do you see the problem?  if you do, what do I do?)

"she had a dream about the king of sweden.."

please watch MINNIE THE MOOCHER excerpt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwgS1ctxglw

"sweden..needin'.."

ode to wode..house

Daily Telegraph on Thursday 27 May 1999

WODEHOUSE SAVED MY LIFE (hugh laurie)

TO be able to write about P. G. Wodehouse is the sort of honour that comes rarely in any man's life, let alone mine. This is rarity of a rare order. Halley's comet seems like a blasted nuisance in comparison.

If you'd knocked on my head 20 years ago and told me that a time would come when I, Hugh Laurie - scraper-through of O-levels, mover of lips (own) while reading, loafer, scrounger, pettifogger and general berk of this parish - would be able to carve my initials in the broad bark of the Master's oak, I'm pretty certain that I would have said "garn", or something like it.

I was, in truth, a horrible child. Not much given to things of a bookery nature, I spent a large part of my youth smoking Number Six and cheating in French vocabulary tests. I wore platform boots with a brass skull and crossbones over the ankle, my hair was disgraceful, and I somehow contrived to pull off the gruesome trick of being both fat and thin at the same time. If you had passed me in the street during those pimply years, I am confident that you would, at the very least, have quickened your pace.

You think I exaggerate? I do not. Glancing over my school reports from the year 1972, I observe that the words "ghastly" and "desperate" feature strongly, while "no", "not", "never" and "again" also crop up more often than one would expect in a random sample. My history teacher's report actually took the form of a postcard from Vancouver.

But this, you will be nauseated to learn, is a tale of redemption. In about my 13th year, it so happened that a copy of Galahad at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse entered my squalid universe, and things quickly began to change. From the very first sentence of my very first Wodehouse story, life appeared to grow somehow larger. There had always been height, depth, width and time, and in these prosaic dimensions I had hitherto snarled, cursed, and not washed my hair. But now, suddenly, there was Wodehouse, and the discovery seemed to make me gentler every day. By the middle of the fifth chapter I was able to use a knife and fork, and I like to think that I have made reasonable strides since.

I spent the following couple of years meandering happily back and forth through Blandings Castle and its environs - learning how often the trains ran, at what times the post was collected, how one could tell if the Empress was off-colour, why the Emsworth Arms was preferable to the Blue Boar - until the time came for me to roll up the map of adolescence and set forth into my first Jeeves novel. It was The Code of the Woosters, and things, as they used to say, would never be the same again.

The facts in this case, ladies and gentlemen, are simple. The first thing you should know, and probably the last, too, is that P. G. Wodehouse is still the funniest writer ever to have put words on paper. Fact number two: with the Jeeves stories, Wodehouse created the best of the best. I speak as one whose first love was Blandings, and who later took immense pleasure from Psmith, but Jeeves is the jewel, and anyone who tries to tell you different can be shown the door, the mini-cab, the train station, and Terminal 4 at Heathrow with a clear conscience. The world of Jeeves is complete and integral, every bit as structured, layered, ordered, complex and self-contained as King Lear, and considerably funnier.

Now let the pages of the calendar tumble as autumn leaves, until 10 years are understood to have passed. A man came to us - to me and to my comedy partner, Stephen Fry - with a proposition. He asked me if I would like to play Bertram W. Wooster in 23 hours of televised drama, opposite the internationally tall Fry in the role of Jeeves.

"Fiddle," one of us said. I forget which.

"Sticks," said the other. "Wodehouse on television? It's lunacy. A disaster in kit form. Get a grip, man."

The man, a television producer, pressed home his argument with skill and determination.

"All right," he said, shrugging on his coat. "I'll ask someone else."

"Whoa, hold up," said one of us, shooting a startled look at the other.

"Steady," said the other, returning the S. L. with top-spin.

There was a pause.

"You'll never get a cab in this weather," we said, in unison.

And so it was that, a few months later, I found myself slipping into a double-breasted suit in a Prince of Wales check while my colleague made himself at home inside an enormous bowler hat, and the two of us embarked on our separate disciplines. Him for the noiseless opening of decanters, me for the twirling of the whangee.

So the great P. G. was making his presence felt in my life once more. And I soon learnt that I still had much to learn. How to smoke plain cigarettes, how to drive a 1927 Aston Martin, how to mix a Martini with five parts water and one part water (for filming purposes only), how to attach a pair of spats in less than a day and a half, and so on.

But the thing that really worried us, that had us saying "crikey" for weeks on end, was this business of The Words. Let me give you an example. Bertie is leaving in a huff: " 'Tinkerty tonk,' I said, and I meant it to sting." I ask you: how is one to do justice of even the roughest sort to a line like that? How can any human actor, with his clumsily attached ears, and his irritating voice, and his completely misguided hair, hope to deliver a line as pure as that? It cannot be done. You begin with a diamond on the page, and you end up with a blob of Pritt, The Non-Sticky Sticky Stuff, on the screen.

Wodehouse on the page can be taken in the reader's own time; on the screen, the beautiful sentence often seems to whip by, like an attractive member of the opposite sex glimpsed from the back of a cab. You, as the viewer, try desperately to fix the image in your mind - but it is too late, because suddenly you're into a commercial break and someone is telling you how your home may be at risk if you eat the wrong breakast cereal.

Naturally, one hopes there were compensations in watching Wodehouse on the screen - pleasant scenery, amusing clothes, a particular actor's eyebrows - but it can never replicate the experience of reading him. If I may go slightly culinary for a moment: a dish of foie gras nestling on a bed of truffles, with a side-order of lobster and caviar may provide you with a wonderful sensation; but no matter how wonderful, you simply don't want to be spoon-fed the stuff by a perfect stranger. You need to hold the spoon, and decide for yourself when to wolf and when to nibble.

And so I am back to reading, rather than playing Jeeves. And my Wodehousian redemption is, I hope, complete. Indeed, there is nothing left for me to say, except to wish, as I fold away my penknife and gaze up at the huge oak towering overhead, that my history teacher could see me now.

i ♥ jeeves and wooster, wodehouse, hugh laurie, stephen fry, minnie the moocher. i don't know what "hoochie-coocher" means either.

like he (h.l.) has said in some other article i'm too lazy to look up, and i'm paraphrasing of course, wodehouse really cheers you up when you're depressed. he's just the most fun to read. don't you think so? even now? of course now you can be a total hedonist and watch FRY/LAURIE play jeeves and wooster on dvd (mine are all scratched from ridiculous over-use).