Birthday Treats

Birthday Treats


Anyone who wants to know what flavor of funny little geek I am need only look at the birthday gifts assembled on my diningroom table.   At the front, we have Season One of Sherlock on blue-ray given by Liam who watched all these episodes with me on TV and can't wait for more.  From Emma, there is a graphic novel version of The Wizard of Oz.   Jamie gave me something neither of us knew existed; an annotated, unesprogated edition of The Picture of Dorian Grey.  If you have a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray on your shelf (as I do), here's something you might not know: the Picture we've all read has been though the editing mill, twice.  Annotations?; oh what joy!  Pictures? Victoriana?  biographical bits?;  I'll take them.

So, what does this tell you about me?  It says that I read 19th century literature, and I mean that I do it for fun.  I've got an e-reader chock-a-block with novels so old that their copyrights have expires and that the Guetenburg Project makes available for free downloads.  I'm delighted, the thought of all those old words makes me clap my hands and shout, “oh goody!”  Some people only read these books for fun, but not me. 

 It reminds my readers who my childhood heroes were; one of them a character who moved though a world full of people who saw but, much to his frustration never really looked and one real person who whose life happened behind the screen his public persona had created.   Wilde's poetry was beautiful,   his comic timing peerless.  His fairy-tales gave up their happy ending to get-you-by-the-throat sadness.  And then, we have Dorian Gray,   you know that old story; a beautiful young man kept young and beautiful while his portrait grew as ugly as his tainted, rotting soul.   The story is the jumping-off point of everything from movies to New Yorker cartoons.  You can't avoid it.  One person created that plot-device, that cliché, that basis of so many stories by himself.  Think about that for a second.   No, I don't think Oscar Wilde's one novel gets all the credit its due.

You can't avoid Sherlock Holmes and John Watson either.  Many people already know how passionately  their creator,  Dr. Conan-Doyle  hated him.  He pushed one to his death  and in doing  silenced that one's Bosewell too, or thought he had.   Conan-Doyle tried, but the reading public wasn't about to let Holmes and Watson go.  Not only was he forced to bring Holmes back from his rocky grave,  other writers still refuse to let the characters go.  They are as solid, as real as Michelangelo's  David; once they'd been created, they couldn't be taken back.

And I do love the modern Sherlock and John.  Sherlock is still brilliant, still brittle and as difficult as he should be.  He's still a one-man force of unique and selective justice.  He continues to care deeply about stopping evil and keeping people safe, and keeps right on hiding just how personally he takes it.  In this version,  the audience truly sees just how much John has to put up with, living with the world's worst roomie.  I am glad to see that John Watson is young, vigorous, and smart.  The man is an army doctor dammit!; he was never meant to be a fat, old, dimwit toddling along after Holmes never copping-on fully.    This John Watson looks more like the great-great-grandson of the Dr. Watson readers always knew.

The last bit of what makes Sherlock so fun for me is that it was created by Steven Moffit, the man who wrote Coupling which I think is one of the funniest television shows ever.  It's often lude, sometimes awkward, and the characters aren't always even likable.  And, it's funny, laugh-as-you-repeat-bits out-loud funny.  

All my birthday gifts have one thing in common; they take a story I know, hammer it into something else, and give it back to me all shiny and new.  That is something I really love.

My love of the reworked old was what I wanted to bring with me on my Mothers' Day outing that never happened.  I wanted to go to something (someplace?) called “Steampunk City”.  Now all I know about steampunk style, imagery, etc. is that it takes the mostly-prettier bits of the Victorian Age and covers them with modern techno-trappings.  Well, that sounds like a fun way to spend a few hours on a Sunday.  I always did love the idea of a nineteenth-century garb-up.  Heck, I've been talked out of dressing like Sherlock Holmes or Oscar Wilde every Halloween since I was thirteen.  As I said, I LOVE that stuff.

I'm forty-four today.  Thirty years ago, I turned fourteen, and my parents took me on the best birthday outing ever.   That night, I saw my first production of The Importance of Being Ernest.  The four of us laughed ourselves nearly sick.  I knew then that this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.  Life-changing?; why yes, it was.