6/23: What I Accomplished Today

1. Priest & Hunter through Midsummer Fire Festival.

2. One of the forgettable things we watched a few nights ago was AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award for Al Pacino. Now this wasn't a particularly good award show as award shows go; Pacino, of course, deserves all the recognition anyone will give him, but it looked like the show was done while everyone was out of town, and that was sort of lame. (And DeNiro wasn't there at all, didn't send a video clip, bubkes? Hmm.)

My Co-Vivant also finds the AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards irritating because, every year, they don't give the award to Richard Widmark. "Remarkable actor, and he needs some recognition before he dies." (She's also irritated each year that the Lifetime Oscar doesn't go to Richard Widmark. Every Lifetime Achievement that doesn't go to Richard Widmark makes her bitter and angry. It sort of looks like he is going to die without having won any, and then after he is dead, every single time we watch an award show, she will be bitter and angry during the Lifetime Achievement part and mutter, "You couldn't have given this to Richard Widmark?" No, I do not understand this obsession with getting a Lifetime Achievement Award to Richard Widmark, either, but I Accept it as a Thing I Cannot Change.) (She wrote AFI, and they said it was their policy to give the award to someone who was still working, to which she responded, "Then why are you calling it a Lifetime Achievement Award?" The obvious answer is, "Nobody under the age of 62 has any recollection of Richard Widmark, so he's not going to generate any ratings for us," but that's a cynical, mean-spirited answer.)

Another reason why this show wasn't so great: the actual award was given by Sean Penn, which, of course, is fitting and proper and very nice and such. However, he gave the weirdest speech in the history of lifetime achievement award shows. He said he had heard the most defining story about Pacino from Pacino himself, and that the story had illuminated and captured the character of the man and the work perfectly. And then he refused to tell the story, assured Pacino his privacy was safe (Pacino mouthed, "Thank you,"), and told us all should all be grateful that Pacino's privacy hadn't been compromised. Dumb ass, why did you threaten to violate that privacy in the first place, then? (Brilliant actor, Sean Penn, but this is the man who seemed to feel Chris Rock needed to informed as to the identity of Jude Law. Was he absent on Sense of Humor Day?)

This is a much longer discussion of this award show than it warranted. But there was one memorable quote that stuck with me. Someone who had worked Pacino (I don't remember if it was Andy Garcia or Jamie Foxx or someone else), said that Pacino had told them that the key to something or other is that Everyone Is Guilty. I don't think it matters what that "something or other" might be, because I think that's the key to many things. It's the key to religion; it's usually couched either in the language of original sin or of "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," but the whole premise behind religion is that everyone is guilty. (Unfortunately, many religious people only comprehend half this memo; they receive it as "Everyone [else] is guilty.") It's the key to compassion. It's the key to many things.

And in some ways, it's the key to many of the current batch of television shows. Many moons ago when I started this blog, I made the comment that I enjoy television shows like The Sopranos, Big Love, and The Riches in which people's lives are perfectly ordinary except for one extraordinary thing. And that's it: we're all guilty. We may not be mobsters, or polygamists, or Travelers, but everybody's got something. Doesn't matter how big or small. Everyone has something.

I was watching Big Love tonight. This show drives my Co-Vivant crazy; she has basically asked me several times how I could watch a show about freaks. This is an educated, open-minded person curious about the world around her. She enjoys The Sopranos and The Riches, to use the list above, very much. But for her, Big Love goes too far; these people aren't worthy of our learning more about them. They are just freaks.

She was in the room while I was watching, and at one point, she said, "I really admire HBO for putting on some of the shows they do." The acting is gorgeous. (Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloe Sevigny are remarkable forces of nature; people should just throw award statuettes at them as they walk down the street on a day-to-day basis.) The writing is impeccable. It's a show of the quality that she would normally flip for. But it's about polygamists, and that's just not okay. I think that's interesting. (No value judgments were made in the writing of these paragraphs. I just think it's interesting.)

3. Finished three or four Pogo badges and worked on the other Premiums.

4. Druid through Midsummer Fire Festival. Started the mage, but I'm too tired to finish that right now.

5. Read some magazines (Wired, Utne, something else) and more for Arthur.