Rowan is very nearly three. This makes life challenging in all sorts of good ways. One way is telling time. She’s sometimes a little unclear of the distinction between meal o’clock and dessert o’clock, for example.
Another way is being the boss.
Bosses are important. All jobs have them, and the job of parenting would be missing something if it was without. “Daddy sit here!” “Clean my hands up!” “I want juice!” “Daddy, explain to me Einstein’s Theory of Relativity!”
Tonight, while missus.dymund and I were still finishing our dinner, Rowan decided that she wanted dessert. Now. “Mummy. Get me a Krispie Square!”
“In a moment, Sweetie. It’s not dessert time yet,” was missus’ fairly reasonable response.
“Mummy, get me one now!”
“In a moment,” missus responded patiently, rising from her chair to put her plate in the dishwasher.
“Mummy! Get me one now!”
And I, like a fool, decided to be helpful. I really should know better. “Rowan,” I say, “how about instead of ‘Mummy-get-me-one-now,’ you try, ‘I would appreciate one as soon as you are able, Mummy.’ It means exactly the same thing, but it’s far more polite.”
“Daddy, that’s SILLYNESS!” was Rowan’s emphatic and enthusiastic response, while leaning directly into my face from her side of the table.
And then, without missing a beat:
“Mummy! Get me one now!”
Uh-huh.
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With all due respect to Steve Martin, the internet is a wild and crazy place. It’s large, it’s vast, it’s open. It can be very personal.
Or it can be completely anonymous.
These extremes can be hard for some people to conceptualize. For example:
Years and years and years ago I signed up for classmates.com, and, a little later, a similar MSN Group. Today, in my weekly update on what [very little] has happened on the MSN group, I was notified of a new member. Wondering if it was someone I might know/remember, I went to the site to see. There wasn’t a great deal of information on the new member. Name? Age? Gender? Marital Status? Location?
Undisclosed. Undisclosed. Undisclosed. Undisclosed. Undisclosed.
Some of this being undisclosed makes sense: MSN is quite nosey. But name strikes me as an odd choice to leave out. This is obviously someone who prefers the completely anonymous aspect of the internet. That’s fine. But then I get to the email address (obviously redacted par moi):
firstname.lastname@isp.com
Coming so soon after the oh-so-subtle leaving out of their name in their profile, I found that quite funny.
And thought that you should, too.
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Some relationships are trouble from the start. Usually one or both parties realize this on the first date, and there isn’t a second. Sometimes, they try again: maybe it was just an off night, and the object of one’s desire is so, y’know, hot. So they try, fail, and then they pack it in. It’s no one’s fault. It’s not you, it’s me.
Some relationships drag on and on. Dating that goes nowhere. Marriage that leads to years of couples’ therapy. Sticking together out of spite.
Sometimes it’s fate. It can be perfect, but just not meant to be.
Sometimes, though… Sometimes you’re dating FOX. A horrible, abusive slut of a network. Everybody knows this, yet nobody seems to care. FOX will chew you up and spit you out, time after time after time. And yet you go back. You can’t help it. It’s got a power over you.
Ladies and gentlemen, submitted for your approval, the sad case of Nathan Fillion and the man-eating network.
To make things really pithy let’s say poor Nate’s Canadian — ’cause he is — and actually talented, too, as Canadians need to be to make it in Hollywood. Young, green, fresh-off-the-bus-from-Edmonton Nate first met FOX in 1998, when he landed a supporting role in Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. And things seemed to go well. Three seasons isn’t anything to shake a stick at, after all. Sure, they changed the title to Two Guys and a Girl for the third season, since the pizza place got all greedy and wanted higher billing. But it was a good show, in a good time slot, and it did well. Nathan was on his way, but now under the spell of FOX. FOX made it easy, too, by giving him little gifts, like a guest shot on King of the Hill, when Nathan would ask questions like, “Where is our relationship going?”
After FOX let Two Guys, [and] a Girl and a Pizza Place down gently came Firefly. You’ll have to forgive me. Firefly is hard for me to talk about. It’s still all so fresh.
Firefly was brilliant. Firefly was done by Joss Whedon and was perfect in just about every way. And FOX was jealous. FOX couldn’t have this. So FOX toyed with Nathan. Moved the nights around. Aired the episodes out of order. FOX eventually dumped our hero after a mere 12 episodes.
And that was that, you would think. Twelve episodes, five years ago.
But five years is a long time for a nasty master like FOX. It got hungry and then rang ol’ Nathan up for a booty call FOX called Drive. And Nathan, poor, misguided, lonely Nathan, answered.
He should’ve known better. He wasn’t hurting for FOX as much as FOX must have been hurting for him. He’d moved on. But FOX made promises. A series. An action series. A race. By Tim Minear, one of the Firefly guys. And on Monday night, leading into 24. So Nathan answered FOX’s invitation.
He got all dressed up. He loaded up his iPod with all the right reconciliation music, he put one foot in front of the other and sat down with FOX.
And got pretty seriously abused.
FOX had promised neutral ground. FOX had said, “Bring some friends for your own comfort,” but FOX hadn’t put their names on the guest list. FOX had said, “I just want to talk.”
But FOX had lied. FOX got Nathan drunk and took advantage of him. And was gone by sun-up having left a little cash on the dresser.
Four (4!) episodes. Three (3!) nights in two (2!) weeks. Of a show that it promoted poorly, wasn’t much of a premise anyway, and then turned out to be surprisingly good. And then poof! It was gone. In classic FOX style: no chance given.
So for Nathan’s own sake, I for one am hoping that the next time FOX’s number comes up on CallerID, he picks it up — doesn’t even say hello — and tells FOX to just forget all aboot him.
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