Friday, June 6, 2008

#1 - What I Learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

So over the past four days you've learned A LOT about SSG.  Probably more than you'd ever really want to know.  And today is post number 100 ... and if SSG had given a little more thought to this thing, she would have maybe actually called  this post #100 ... but it is kind of, right?  In a backwards kind of way?  Because I started off with a countDOWN and ...


So wait, where was I?

Oh right!  This weekend we'll get back to the fun, sarcastic and occasionally witty banter that drew you here in the first place.  But one more confession for the road ... and I think it's the most important thing about me.

I learned something from Buffy the Vampire Slayer once.

I have always been quite literal.  As a kid, I thought the big deal about Mt. Rushmore was that it magically appeared there, that all of the presidents faces miraculously showed up on a big rock, and that's what made everybody talk about it so much.  Then I found out someone CARVED it.  That it was MANMADE and my little six year old self was all "Seriously?  That's it?"   I also thought that adults knew everything.  That there was a finite amount of knowledge in the world and once you learned everything, you became an adult and that's why we went to school.  To learn everything.  And then become adults.

The point is, I always thought that the trick to life was to figure out the answers everybody else already knew.  So I got good grades.  And I worked really hard at being the perfect daughter and friend and sister and granddaughter and horseback rider and party-er and employee and girlfriend and woman and student and pasty white chick in tan San Diego and natural chick in pasty Seattle and on and on and on.  And I thought that if I just kept going I would get there.  Where?  Well ... THERE.

"There" was a place where it would all be okay, where I would be safe and loved and cared about and happy and life would be perfect.  I just had to find it.  And I'm guessing you can imagine how WELL that went for me?  Yeah.

I followed A LOT of roads that I thought would take me "there" and they were constantly changing.  First it was fashion.  Then it was money.  After that it was the right boyfriend.  The right college.  Then maybe the right job?  Ok, the right body?  The right volunteer work?  Then maybe the right house?  The right paint color?  Maybe a therapist knows?  What about my friends?  My boss?  Ok, maybe Oprah.  Are you there, Oprah?  It's me, SSG.

Until finally last year I asked myself "What do YOU think?" "What do YOU feel?"  What do YOU want?"  

Ummmmm?  (Cue crickets.)

Listen to myself?  Trust myself?  Uh, wha?  I didn't know anything!  That's why I listened to other people, because if I knew what I was doing, I'd be doing it.  Duh.

That's when I found out a little secret.  

No one else knows what they're doing either.

The single chicks out at the bars.  The single dudes out at the bars.  The married wives and husbands.  The parents.  The teachers.  The President.  Even Oprah?!  Nope.

Nobody has it all figured out, but most of us pretend like we do.

Everyone feels hurt at times.  Everyone feels self conscious at times.  Everyone feels betrayed and loved and understood and wrong and right and mad and sad and happy and elated and creative and smart and stupid and like they want to give up or like they have more energy than they've ever had before.  Sometimes people feel sexy and sometimes they don't.  And sometimes people can't get out of bed.  Sometimes those same people jump out of bed.  Sometimes people say the right things and sometimes they say the wrong things.  Sometimes people worry and sometimes they don't.  Sometimes what people want and get doesn't feel right.  Sometimes what people don't think they want, they get and love.  One day people want to walk away from everything they know and the next day they can't imagine being anywhere else.

I realized I felt all of these things, often times at once, and it scared the shit out of me.  
What was I supposed to DO with all of that?  Well, easy.

I ignored it.

I said:  "Nooooope.  Uh, uh.  Don't want to feel scared.  Bye fear!  Nope, don't want to be a needy.  Bye needy chick!  Nope, don't want to feel any bad stuff at all. Uh uh.  Only good.  Nothing else.  Too scary.  If I open ALL of that up, it will be the end and I will implode into a big black hole of ick.  So I just WON'T."

And that's where Buffy comes in.  There was an episode that had an off screen monster that was about to invade Sunnyvale (or whatever "Sunny" place in which Buffs lived--sorry real Buffy fans).  This monster was so terrifying that everyone talked about it in panic throughout the entire episode.  The monster would be the end of the world as we know it!  It would kill everyone!  When the monster finally showed up toward the end of the hour, it had been built up to such epic proportion of evil, wrath and destruction that I was terrified.  The monster appeared!  Huge flash of smoke and lights!  Everyone (including me) jumped back in horror!

Until they saw the monster.  The monster that was about 6 inches tall.  Everyone paused.  And then they all said how cute it was.  I think someone even picked it up and pet it.  And then they decided to go get dinner.

The scariest time?  Is always right before you see the monster.  And once you look it in the face, you realize it's not as big as it once seemed.  And perhaps, in the space that your monster once occupied is the "there" you've been looking for all along ... and damn it if it hasn't been with you the whole time.

Now can I go make out with David Boreanaz?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Early life
David Boreanaz was born on May 16th, 1969 in Buffalo, New York and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his father, Dave Roberts (David Thomas Boreanaz), is a weatherman for channel WPVI-TV; his mother, Patti Boreanaz, is a travel agent.[1] He is of Italian descent and the surname Boreanaz is of Northern Italian origin.[2][3] He was raised Catholic[4].
Boreanaz attended high school at Malvern Preparatory School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and went to college at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York.[citation needed] After graduating, Boreanaz moved to Hollywood, California to pursue an acting career.
[edit]Career
Boreanaz's first acting appearance was a guest spot on the hit American sitcom, Married... with Children, as Kelly's biker boyfriend. He was cast in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after being spotted by a producer whilst walking his dog. In the cult series, he played the mysterious Angel, a vampire with a soul. The show became enormously successful and Boreanaz starred in a spin-off series, Angel, which gave the character a chance to evolve and concentrated on Angel's battle for redemption. He appeared on Buffy from 1997 to 1999, at which point he began starring in Angel, which ran until 2004. Totalling all of his appearances on Buffy & Angel, including guest appearances, Boreanaz has the distinction of having appeared in the most episodes of the 2 series by a significant margin.
Boreanaz's only starring role in a major theatrical film was in 2001's slasher horror film, Valentine, alongside Denise Richards and Katherine Heigl. In 2003, he appeared in the music video for singer Dido's "White Flag", and was the voice of Leon (aka Squall Leonhart) in the video game Kingdom Hearts, but he did not reprise his role in the sequel.
In 2005, Boreanaz began starring opposite Emily Deschanel on the current prime time television series, Bones. He most recently appeared in These Girls, a Canadian film in which he played a biker; the film received a limited theatrical release in Canada in March of 2006, after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival. His upcoming roles include parts in the independent films Mr. Fix it and Suffering Man's Charity. In that same year, he also voiced Hal Jordan in the direct to video DC Comics animated feature Justice League: The New Frontier. Interestingly, in the season 3 finale of his TV series "Bones", Booth is seen in his bathtub reading an issue of Green Lantern, the character he voiced in the Justice League: The New Frontier movie.
[edit]Personal life


Boreanaz with Bergman in 2006.
Boreanaz lives in Los Angeles, California. He was married to Ingrid Quinn from June 7, 1997 to October 1999, and married actress and model Jaime Bergman on November 24, 2001. The couple have a son, Jaden Rayne Boreanaz, who was born on May 1, 2002. He and his wife are also good friends with Raven Symone. David attended her 21st birthday in December 2006.


He has also admitted a secret love for SSG, and even had steamy dreams in the late night hours that caused him to question his very existence. (This is the point where Air Supply enters the picture singing Making love out of......you get the point) Deep down inside all he wants to do is take bubble baths with SSG and a glass of wine while enjoying a facial in an olympic size bath tub holding rose petals and luffa's galore!

Anonymous said...

This comment might seem crass after the first one: thoughtful post!

Lys said...

Sometimes Buffy had some quips (Yes I will admit I watched but clearly for the David Boreanez (he's a philly boy of course *LOL*) and Marc Blucas factor) but they just made sense.

And that little tiny monster - I remember that ep. Sometimes our biggest mountains are all in our minds and we have to squish them ourselves or, to quote one of the other characters, "..., deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it."

That's a lesson I'm facing right now. Thanks for being so open SSG!

HalfAsstic.com said...

Yes, I can see that you would make a great children's book author. You're really going places with that "moral of the story" thing. Good job!