The Holy Grail of Friday Night Lights sightings.

Well, in all honesty, the true Holy Grail might be a slight toss up, but nonetheless, at work last night, I saw none other than Zach Gilford, aka, Matt Saracen.

I was at my register, and he started to get in my line, but then saw an open register and went to that one. My heart leapt, I stopped what I was doing for a second and watched him go, the way I might watch an ex-lover who has seen me in public and walked the other way. I knew it was him; there was no doubt. I quickly finished with my customer, then shut off my light and left my register to find some excuse to walk over to where he was.



Had he come through my line, I would have stuttered something retarded about how I wanted to have his babies; I wouldn't have been able to avoid it, I was so star-struck. But seeing as how he was now with someone else, and there were other people in that line, I couldn't just walk up and melt in front of him and get his shoes wet, so I had to devise another plan - which became taking his cart from him.

He was clearly looking for a place to leave it, so I cheerfully said, with lots of eye contact, "I can take that for you." He sort of pushed it towards me and mumbled, "Thanks."

He's not very friendly, that one. He had a standoffish vibe and shifty eyes. I think he noticed my staring at him.

Maybe Coach Taylor was just extra hard on him at practice yesterday and he had to stop at the store on the way home and get groceries for his grandma and he was just tired. The irony, though, is that I don't know a single person outside of my group of friends that watches that show. When Scott Porter came through my line that day I asked nearly every single person in the service department if they watched they show or knew who he was because I wanted to share my excitement, and not one single person did.

You hear that, Saracen? You're safe there. No one knows you. I'll take good care of you. Just come back.

Too Many Movies?

A few minutes ago I'm sitting at my desk in my bedroom, happily playing email Scrabble, when I hear footsteps underneath my window. Ask anyone who knows my backyard, and they'll tell you it's creepy at night. It's gigantic, and extremely dark, and lined with shrubbery around the entire fence that protrudes a good 10 feet into the yard.

I know I heard the footsteps, because my desk is right up against the window and my window is open. So despite the fact that I can't see shit because it's too dark (I never shut my blinds), I hear them and I stop. I perk up. The footsteps stop, then I hear them again, very distinctly the sound of two heavy feet walking on the dead leaves, going in the opposite direction. And it truly sounds like they're about 4 feet from my window. I have a door in my room that goes into the back yard as well, so first thing I do is look over at the door to make sure it's locked.

My roommate Garrett has a telescope he likes to take out into the backyard sometimes, so I leave my room and go knock on his door, thinking maybe it's him outside messing around, but he answers from inside his room, so obviously it's not him. However, he decides to go investigate with me.

I grab a hammer and a flashlight and we go outside. We scour the entire backyard and of course find nothing, but I swear to god it was not my imagination. Yes, I looked at about a hundred videos of ghosts today and watched Session 9 tonight, which was creepy as shit, but I heard it, and I stand by my story.

Both sides of the backyard have big gates, and the one on the north side is always standing open, and fairly secluded by a garage apartment (and that person has moved out, so I know it wasn't her; it's empty right now), but it's still there. Yesterday I saw two homeless people walking down the street, the state hospital is 3 blocks away, and a couple months ago, as I rounded the corner onto my street riding my bike home from work late one night, some cops had the entrance to the street from the main road blocked off and several cops were walking up and down my street with their flashlights. I didn't ask any questions; I just went inside and made sure all the doors were locked.

So even though it was probably nothing, it's not completely ridiculous that someone could have been in the backyard. And I'm still sleeping with the hammer next to my bad tonight.

Television Killed the Cinema Star

An early October issue of Entertainment Weekly that I was reading in the breakroom at work tonight had a fluffy, but mildly interesting article (isn't that every article in EW?) about why no gay movies have been made in the 2 years since Brokeback Mountain was such a critical and economic success. Particularly, it noted, since gay characters have become so ubiquitous and popular on television. The article offered several theories for this, like that studio producers and executives tended to be old, white men who have had their jobs for decades compared to TV producers, which have a much higher turnover rate and tend to be much younger and more diverse, and that there simply aren't any good "gay scripts" out there (which I tend to have a hard time believing; or, well, after programming the Austin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival for 2 years, maybe I don't....).

Whatever the case may be, they had a quote from Alan Ball saying that one reason he saw for this was that so many gay films tended to be about issues (AIDS, coming out, discrimination), and that being gay was the main thrust (ahem) of the story. Whereas on television, you have hours and hours and hours to slowly and subtley reveal a character's true, well, character, and make relationships so much more nuanced and realistic.



This is what drew me into television to begin with, and why I think really incredible television shows have pretty much killed my love of movies. Anymore, 2 hours simply isn't enough time for me to invest in characters that I like. I've never been terribly interested in plot, which could explain why I generally hate mysteries, thrillers, and action films. A good story is nice, but I enjoy television and film for the characters and the richness and intimacy that watching people develop over years can bring you.



All of my favorite shows (Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Friday Night Lights) have all been character-based, and about extraordinarily complex and nuanced characters (well, maybe not Sex and the City so much, and only the first 2 seasons of Nip/Tuck; seasons 3 and 4 got very plotty and stupid and totally sucked). And not only that, they've all been set in very specific "worlds" (high-fashion New York; a funeral home; a high-end cosmetic surgery hospital; small-town Texas) that generally have very prescribed ideas about how things should be, and all feature characters either creating or breaking those molds and boundaries. So, in another sense, I guess all of those shows have also been about identity and defining oneself within the confines of whatever world it is the characters are existing in.



With movies everything has to be so glossed over, so quick, so surface. With television shows, relationships can begin and end in real time; people can grow up, or change, in such slow and realistic ways, that when you go back and visit them again at the beginning of whatever show it is compared to the end of the show, you can really see the progress and change, whereas you might not have really noticed it while watching the show. In TV shows, characters don't have to have revelatory epiphanies and a conclusion like they do in movies. That's not real life. I'm not knocking movies here, I'm simply saying for my money, movies just don't cut it for me anymore. I like to be able to grow with my characters and become intimately involved in their lives. (To this day, I still maintain that I've never seen a movie that can rival Six Feet Under for me.)



Which goes back to Alan Ball's comment. A lot of emphasis in the gay rights movement has been placed on being "out" and visible, and how that, more than anything, has helped the cause. Because the more people that know gay people, and realize that they're not all AIDS victims, or serial killers, or political activists, the more the regular population will see them as just being regular people. If a middle-aged soccer mom in Iowa who's never known a gay person can watch Six Feet Under and watch David struggle with his sexuality over 5 years, and become really attached to him, and the show can humanize this character and make the anxiety and fear of that struggle very real to this woman, in a way that a film never could (despite how great Brokeback was, it was still two very famous, heterosexual actors playing dress up, and that's impossible to forget while watching it), then I say, bring on the TV.

Black eyes and broken hearts

Only someone who grew up in, or has spent a significant amount of time in, a small town (I'm talking 20,000 people or under) can really understand the strange relationships that form between and among people in that environment. People often find themselves friends with the most unlikely of people, simply because when there isn't anybody, as soon as you find someone you have even the remotest of connection with, you latch onto them. Or you're often thrust into unusual situations, or you're connected in the most direct of ways to someone through someone else you know. Rarely is anything random the way life in bigger cities tends to be. But even that randomness is often overstated, I think, especially in art. Movies like Magnolia, Short Cuts, Heights, or a myriad of other motion pictures, play up this scattershot effect in relationships, but it's usually totally contrived and unbelievable.



This, I think, is the blessing of the TV show Friday Night Lights. Obviously, it's rarely a show about football, and actually a show about relationships, and the people that play football, and the literal religion that it can be in small towns. (Which is another thing I think only people who grew up experiencing it can really understand.) The relationships in FNL are complicated, messy, and have real, lasting effects. Nobody gets an easy out. You have to give props to a show, much like Six Feet Under, that constantly pounds you over the head with how rotten everybody is, but refuses to judge, moralize, or condemn. In other words, the writers treat the characters like the flawed, but ultimately (usually) good-hearted people they really are. Just like in real life.



People make a lot of mistakes and hurt a lot of people in FNL, and seeing that it's such a small town, no one can avoid anybody else. It's all right out there, the gaping wounds and letters of shame. There's nowhere to hide in a town like Dillon, Texas, and everybody knows your story. And yet, the drama feels real. It never (well, rarely) feels contrived, and while the people of Dillon learn a lot of painful lessons about life, love and loyalty, the show doesn't shove it down your throat.

In the pilot episode, the town's beloved star quarterback, and the boy who's going to take them to state and fame, Jason Street, is plowed down in the season's first game and breaks his spine. We learn very soon after that he is paralyzed and will never walk again. (That's no spoiler; we learn that in the second episode, and it's strongly hinted at in the first.) The show never shies away from the painful reality of a strong-willed boy being struck down in the prime of his youth, with so much promise and potential. His own recovery and psychological journey is compelling enough, but throw in a small town in utter turmoil and despair, and the ensuing social fallout from people who ultimately care more about the game than about the players, and you've got the makings for drama of biblical proportions. The show does a great job of going from being a show about football in the first few episodes, to gradually expanding the plotlines to involve the more peripheral characters who have little attachment to the game except by geographic proximity.



A lot happens in the first season of FNL, considering there are 22 episodes, and it occasionally gets bogged down in its own melodramatic angst, but never for long. Bad, ugly and painful shit is always gonna happen, but how you react to it makes it dramatic or not. The writers of FNL know this, and usually go to great lengths to temper the drama with level-headed and mature reactions. Thus, for the most part, rendering it exciting, moving and sweet, instead of overblown and falsely sentimental. It figures that a show this smart, funny, insightful, and genuine is struggling so badly. The DVD's come out next week, and NBC is pushing them for $20 for the whole season. That's a steal. I can't recommend highly enough that you get it, and start getting to know the fascinating people of Dillon, Texas.

I know it probably seems like I'm making this up, but I swear I'm not.

My brush with fame continued at work today, as two more Friday Night Lights cast members actually came through my line. They were together. It was Julie and Saracen's Grandma.

When they walked up to the register, "Julie" tossed a container of cheese from the salad bar onto the register and said, "I don't know how to weigh that." Beat. "It's cheese."

Thanks, Captain Obvious. And though I very nearly did, I still didn't say anything about the show. I did, however, make a resolution to myself that if this guy, this guy, or this guy come in, I'll simply have to tell them how much I admire their jobs. Because they're my favorites. Also, "Julie" has really big boobs.

He's not quite as cute in real life, but I still wouldn't kick him out of bed.

Today at work, Scott Porter came through my line. I tried to play it cool (which I think I mostly managed), except that I wrestled, throughout the entire transaction, with whether or not to tell him that I just started watching Friday Night Lights and think it's one of the greatest things ever. But I ended up not, because I didn't want to be that guy, but I did totally stare at him the whole time. I think it was probably pretty clear that he knew that I knew who he was.

Nevertheless, I was very excited.

The real irony is that I've spent my whole life trying to get away from these people, and now I can't stop watching a TV show that's all about them

While we were at Barton Springs this morning, Bryan and I once again started talking about Friday Night Lights, the show. So I finally got his DVD of all the episodes, loaded them onto my computer and started watching.

Holy shit.

No wonder nobody watches this show. I didn't even know network TV could be this good. I just sat and watched 5 episodes in a row, pretty much non-stop. I'm only quitting now because I have to be at work at 8am tomorrow. I think I could probably keep watching it all night. I've pretty much bawled into my pillow 3 times already. I recognize so much of Austin, and there's some very familiar music. I figured it was a great show; I've heard nothing but good things about it, but I had no idea it would be like this.

Wow. I can't wait to come home from work tomorrow and start watching it again. I'll definitely have it done in time for season 2. Which I'm already eagerly anticipating.