You know you're a Brokaholic when...

[serious crayons]

I did! I'm an Earl-o-holic, or Amigo de Earl, or Amigo de Garcia, or whatever, too!  Very a propos point, Katherine!

Thanks, Jeff! You and I have discussed Earl before, so I thought you might have seen it, too. 

BTW, it was an uncomfortable moment that evening, with the whole family gathered around the TV. I was just waiting for my kids to start teasing me about my own semi-surreptitious online life (they find my online activity questionable, at best ). But, amazingly, they passed up the opportunity. From which I can only conclude that online friendships are becoming normalized and accepted, even among skeptics like my sons.

And I thought that Earl episode treated it quite respectfully, when they might as easily have portrayed message-board participants as weird losers who can't make friends in real life. The dead guy was articulate and attractive and knowledgable online (seen in flashbacks), and the friends who came to his funeral seemed like nice, normal, caring friends.

BTW, now that the subject is up, Earl is far LESS progressive in its portrayal of gay characters. That's probably the thing I find most annoying about the show. What do you think, Jeff?

[Brown Eyes]

Yeah, I think the glee I get out of Brokieisms... and the fun of knowing that this is where I can come to find people who understand (and won't judge this perhaps peculiar obsession with one film/ story) are on-going symptoms of Brokaholism.  I'm beginning to sense that the addicition to BetterMost has taken on a life of it's own and is somewhat different from the basic love of BBM.  They're forever tied together.  But, the joy in feeling like part of a great community of friends (who can talk about things other than BBM) is it's own thing.  I'm just repeating what's been said above I think.  But, it feels very true to me.
 

[Cameron]

Did I tell you all how glad I am to find my way here.  As I think Edna put it I was slow straggling up the mountain, and I am so glad you are all here as I am going through what you all did months ago.  I never was on a boad before, but I couldn't believe that this place exists, with so many great people.

In real life I don't really have anyone that I could go talk to about BBM, and its hit me so hard and made me realize so many aspects of my life I want to change.

It is a great community of open minded, thinking, and friendly people and I think it should go on and become even more even beyond BBM and like Phillip said in his beautiful letter, a place where people could find ways help them to change.

Oh yeah, I still have not stopped thinking about BBM since I saw it, and I know I willl still be thinking about it for a long while,

And I finally bought a divd player and three different copies of it  so I think I am already a brokaholic

[Meryl]

And I thought that Earl episode treated it quite respectfully, when they might as easily have portrayed message-board participants as weird losers who can't make friends in real life. The dead guy was articulate and attractive and knowledgable online (seen in flashbacks), and the friends who came to his funeral seemed like nice, normal, caring friends.

I wish I had seen that episode.  It's kind of a breakthrough for the portrayal of internet users, isn't it?

Yeah, I think the glee I get out of Brokieisms... and the fun of knowing that this is where I can come to find people who understand (and won't judge this perhaps peculiar obsession with one film/ story) are on-going symptoms of Brokaholism.  I'm beginning to sense that the addicition to BetterMost has taken on a life of it's own and is somewhat different from the basic love of BBM.  They're forever tied together.  But, the joy in feeling like part of a great community of friends (who can talk about things other than BBM) is it's own thing.  I'm just repeating what's been said above I think.  But, it feels very true to me.

Very well articulated, Amanda. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

BTW, now that the subject is up, Earl is far LESS progressive in its portrayal of gay characters. That's probably the thing I find most annoying about the show. What do you think, Jeff?

It doesn't bother me, because those gay characters are seen through the eyes of a character, Earl, who is obviously a Neanderthal. (Oh, dear, I've just stereotyped cave men.  )

But don't forget, in the debut episode, even the Neanderthal Earl actually took Kenny the Gay Guy to a gay bar--after he got over his initial panic reaction, of course. And Earl was quite comfortable in that bar once Kenny told him how much he, Earl, had done for him, Kenny.

I wish I had seen that episode.  It's kind of a breakthrough for the portrayal of internet users, isn't it?

Only to a limit. The friend from India had to break away from her reminiscences to answer a Tech Services call.   

(Edit: OK, I just made a tiny edit to fix my own spelling error. Jeez. ...    )

[Meryl]

Only to a limit. The friend from India had to break away from her reminiscences to answer a Tech Services call.   

  

[serious crayons]

It doesn't bother me, because those gay characters are scene through the eyes of a character, Earl, who is obviously a Neanderthal. (Oh, dear, I've just stereotyped cave men.  )

But don't forget, in the debut episode, even the Neanderthal Earl actually took Kenny the Gay Guy to a gay bar--after he got over his initial panic reaction, of course. And Earl was quite comfortable in that bar once Kenny told him how much he, Earl, had done for him, Kenny.

I guess ... It made me cringe a little. But (to paraphrase my favorite line by Gene Hackman in "The Royal Tennenbaums") what doesn't these days? 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I guess ... It made me cringe a little. But (to paraphrase my favorite line by Gene Hackman in "The Royal Tennenbaums") what doesn't these days? 

Well, nice that it made you cringe, I guess. Maybe a lot is owed to Jason Lee's wide-eyed delivery of his lines. The creators of the show send up so many stereotypes (e.g., in the funeral episode, the woman in India is working at a computer "Help desk"/tech services position) that I find I can't take any of it seriously.

Real case in point: The show is set in some fictitious "Camden County," but I can't help but believe that's a joky reference to the city and county in New Jersey just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia!

[serious crayons]

Well, nice that it made you cringe, I guess. Maybe a lot is owed to Jason Lee's wide-eyed delivery of his lines. The creators of the show send up so many stereotypes (e.g., in the funeral episode, the woman in India is working at a computer "Help desk"/tech services position) that I find I can't take any of it seriously.

Yes, it's hard to get offended by Earl himself. He's supposed to be a redneck, so it's realistic to show him as homophobic, and then nice when he can set his prejudices aside. Plus, Jason Lee makes him so cute and funny and goofy and naive and well-meaning that you can't really be offended by him.

I was thinking more of the way the characters are portrayed: Kenny, who is dorky and feeble, and then that guy on the bus-stop bench a couple of weeks ago who, due to a misunderstanding, goes off for a quick tryst in the park with Randy. Compare those to the way Darnell is portrayed. He's funny and has his own quirks, but they don't evoke creaky stereotypes about black people. I can't remember where you stood on the "SNL gay cowboys in the audience" debate, Jeff, but this is sort of the same situation.

Here's something I read recently in Slate that made me think of that SNL debate and that I thought expressed the issue really well. Laura Kipnis is writing about stereotypes in a particular book -- in this case, stereotypes about behavior of straight women and men. But the principle she describes is exactly what we SNL-segment opponents were talking about.

If there's humor to be milked from the (tragically, all too common) situation of loving someone who doesn't love you back, or from the variety of self-abnegating female behavior on display here, let's call it the humor of painful recognition. The comedy hinges on a willingness to recognize the element of truth in the parody. But the humor of painful recognition is also an inherently conservative social form, especially when it comes to conventional gender behaviors, because it just further hardens such behaviors into "the way things are." The laughter depends not only on our recognizing the world as it supposedly is, but on our leaving it that way; it questions nothing. Consider, by contrast, someone like Sarah Silverman, whose scabrous humor, delivered in that faux-naive girly voice, leaves exactly nothing the same. When Silverman takes on female abjection—most famously, "I was raped by my doctor. Which is such a poignant experience for a Jewish girl"—the clichés are demolished, not upheld; the world as it was is turned on its ear. The laughter isn't from painful recognition, it's the shock and pleasure of smashing conventions instead of toadying to them.

I didn't find the rest of the piece all that interesting, frankly (though I usually like Laura Kipnis). But for the record, you can read the whole article here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2158215/

[Jeff Wrangler]

I can't remember where you stood on the "SNL gay cowboys in the audience" debate, Jeff, but this is sort of the same situation.

Here's something I read recently in Slate that made me think of that SNL debate and that I thought expressed the issue really well. Laura Kipnis is writing about stereotypes in a particular book -- in this case, stereotypes about behavior of straight women and men. But the principle she describes is exactly what we SNL-segment opponents were talking about.

I didn't find the rest of the piece all that interesting, frankly (though I usually like Laura Kipnis). But for the record, you can read the whole article here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2158215/

Well, I don't watch SNL--never have, and didn't even for Jake (I think it's healthier emotionally for me to go out on a Saturday night and hang out with my buddies than to sit at home--alone--watching late night television)--so I know nothing about this "SNL gay cowboys in the audience debate" of which you speak, and therefore have no position. Sorry!

That excerpt from Laura Kipnis is interesting. I like that phrase, "the humor of painful recognition." However, I barely know who Sarah Silverman is--I think I read something about her somewhere, so I assume she's a raunchy female comic--but I don't get Kipnis's take that Silverman's joke about being raped by her doctor is a poignant experience for a Jewish girl "demolishes" rather than "upholds" cliches. I would think the joke is funny precisely because of the stereotype or cliche that "all Jewish mothers want their daughters to marry doctors." I can see that the joke turns the cliche on its head, but I don't see that it demolishes (that is, destroys) it--unless by "demolishes" Kipnis means what I'm calling "turning it on its head."

(Edit: Just to note that I'm leaving work early this afternoon, 3:30 EST, to go visit my father for the weekend, and I'll be out of computer touch till I return home Sunday evening, so if I drop out of the conversation, that's why. ~J.W.)