song of myself

My dear friend R, who I have known since middle school, is here in Chicago for a few days. Over dinner last night we had an awesome conversation about the weirdness of our Southern upbringings. Sometimes I forget just how strange life was (and is) in my little hometown, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have led such a colorful life.

To wit, here’s a small sampling of the topics that were under discussion.

Topic #1: Moonshine Shenanigans
Our trip down memory lane started with a simple enough question: “I wonder what ever happened to Legless Chris?”

Legless Chris was one of the nicest people I have ever known. We met him at the gas station that R’s dad owned. Chris didn’t work there, but his friends did, so he hung around the snack bar most days. Despite the fact that he looked like something out of a Francis Bacon painting, or perhaps because of that, he had an awesome sense of humor. No one made fun of his stumpy badges of congenital deformity more than he did, and for that I couldn’t help but admire him.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was very generous about letting us take turns riding his scooter around the gas station parking lot. If I was a legless person on a scooter, I’m pretty sure I would just growl and chase people around all day.

Once, when we were sixteen, R’s mom went out of town for the weekend. Bored and listless, we decided to invite the gas station boys over to hang out in her garage. Someone brought some beer and someone else brought a big ol’ bottle of peach moonshine, which we drank with gusto. Once I was good and woozy, I got behind the wheel of Legless Chris’s scooter, which I promptly wrecked by driving headfirst into a ditch.

Amazingly, the scooter and I both emerged intact. Chris laughed the whole time, even though the rest of us were worried about the damage. That’s just the kind of guy he was.


Me (front) with R on the scooter (pre-ditch), circa 1995.

Topic #2: Dysfunctional Family Members
I love nothing more than sharing stories about my dysfunctional relatives, a pastime my little sister calls “shaming the family.” (She hasn’t experienced the effects of shame loss just yet.) R is the only person I know who can match me person-for-person in any conversation about batshit families, so we discuss them often and at length.

My favorite dysfunctional family members are my cousin AL and her crack baby. (Well, technically he’s a methadone baby, but whatever.) The first awesome thing about my cousin is that she was so fucked up when she gave birth that she gave her child the exact same name as her sister’s child, who was a toddler at the time.

You should probably take a minute to let that sink in. The sheer stupidity of it is sort of staggering.

The second awesome thing about AL is that when R asked me what she’s up to, I answered, in all seriousness, “Well, she pretty much rotates between jail, her job at Wendy’s, and rehab. I want to say she’s in rehab right now, but she could just as easily be at Wendy’s.”

Obviously, moments such as that are priceless in themselves, but they also help me look extra-good in my mother’s eyes. Whenever I do something stupid, I tell her, “At least I’m not in jail, the Wendy’s drive-through, or rehab. You should be grateful.”

Topic #3: Possum Eaters
Speaking of my mother, I was excited to tell R about the possum incident.

It all started when I was telling mom about the warm summer night that a possum with an oozing head wound sauntered into E’s kitchen. I spend a lot of time on the phone with my mother discussing wildlife threats, and we must have talked about E’s possum for a solid half-hour, if not longer.

As further proof of my theory that terror conjures nemeses (e.g., wild turkeys and mice), it was only a few days before mom’s neighbor reported that he saw a pregnant possum waddling around her yard before she ducked into the crawl space beneath the house.

Mom is even more fearful of nemeses than I, so she called The Trapper.

(Well, maybe “called” isn’t the right word, since I’m not sure The Trapper has a phone. I guess it would be more accurate to say she got word to The Trapper. Evidently, his lair is somewhere on the side of a mountain and he’s very hard to get in touch with.)

When he finally came, he donned an orange biohazard suit and set out to explore the crawl space. When he emerged, he explained that the mother possum had kicked in a vent to access the space, where she then spawned her evil brood. He set three live traps—large wire cages “hidden” in some bushes—in the front yard, and left my poor mother with strict instructions to check them every morning on her way to work.

Mom went out the first morning to find one empty trap, one with a large possum, and one with a very frightened looking cat.

She faced a terrible dilemma: she feared for the cat, but it had the misfortune to wander into the trap that was adjacent to the one full of possum. The rodent’s menace was far too great for her to risk an approach. Shaken, she drove to work, where her tale of woe moved the maintenance woman to pledge to drive to her house to liberate the cat.

Mom, feeling secure in the knowledge that the cat would soon be free, decided to risk a little Internet research. She was pleased to discover that possums and cats are, in fact, friendly, so she decided that maybe they were getting along. Her relief was short-lived, though, because soon The Trapper was on a (borrowed?) phone, furious that someone else had “broken” his trap. A fierce argument ensued, but I guess mom was able to smooth things over.

Of course, mom was distressed when the maintenance lady called to report that The Trapper, all red-faced and screaming, had confronted her at the scene of the crime, waving the possum-filled trap over his head like a man possessed. When I told mom that maybe she should fire him and look for someone else, she said she’s afraid that he might set fire to the house. In any case, she’s no longer worried that the possums will find their way back to the crawl space: even if The Trapper doesn’t wring their necks with his bare hands and make them into soup (as I suggested), all that jostling around in the traps must at least leave them disoriented.

shame-filled special edition

Shame-Loss Phenomenon Exhibit 666: What I’m Reading

I have spent the better part of the last five days reading the Twilight saga, the bestselling series of young adult novels by Stephenie Meyer. I finished the fourth and final book about an hour ago.

I can tell you a few things right off the bat:
(1) These books are dumb and badly written.
(2) I really, really enjoyed reading them.

Normally, I wouldn't find those views incompatible because I’m really into pop culture slumming. But the thing is, with most dumb stuff I’m into (The Hills, US Weekly), there is some sort of subtext that appeals to my sense of humor. With these books, there is no subtext whatsoever; they were straight-up written by a re, for other res.

So I have been puzzling over how to reconcile (1) and (2).

On one hand, I can trace my love for bad novels way back. I was one of those kids who spent every spare moment behind a book. I borrowed them from the library twenty at a time and hauled them to school to read at lunchtime, even though the other kids laughed at me. Usually, when someone talks about being a big reader as a child, they speak of their love for the classics. For me, that was emphatically not the case. From third through fifth grade, I steadily worked my way through the oeuvres of authors like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Agatha Christie, and V.C. Andrews.

(I was a weird little kid.)

On the other hand, I rarely read trashy novels anymore. This is mostly because bad writing makes me angrier than a long night of whisky drinking. And, truly, the Twilight saga is nothing if not badly written. Meyer offers a take on the vampire legend that is so dimly imagined that I can summarize the first book (some 500 pages) thusly:

Edward Cullen: I love you, but I am a very dangerous vampire!
Bella Swan: I don’t care about the danger. You see, I have very little self-esteem.
Edward: [Smirks.]
Bella: You are perfect! [Forgets to breathe.]
Edward: [Rolls eyes.] That’s true.
Bella: One question: do you think we can ever, you know, do it?
Edward: [Touches cold lips to Bella’s throat.] Sorry, this is about it.
Bella: Can we at least kiss with tongue?
Edward: No. I might kill you at any second.
Bella: That’s hot! You’re perfect.
Edward: Indeed.

So what kept me (not to mention the Bungled & Botched) reading?

A little research suggests that I am not the first person to ask this question. A Salon reviewer explained the books’ popularity by identifying them as members of the romantic novel tradition. (All-female readership + one-dimensional characters = lady porn.) While the series follows certain conventions of that genre, I think the real explanation behind its baffling popularity has more to do with its rightful position on the fantasy shelf.

I am hardly a fantasy buff, but it seems to me, broadly speaking, the genre offers two frameworks. The first—let’s call it “pure fantasy”—explores an alternate universe with no real ties to the world we live in (e.g., Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials). The second framework—let’s call it “looking-glass fantasy”—posits there is a secret supernatural world that somehow intersects with reality as we know it (e.g., Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia).

There are exceptions, of course, but it seems safe to say that, of these two sub-genres, the looking-glass fantasy appeals to a wider audience. In part, that is because fantasy that is rooted in a familiar world is, by definition, more accessible. But I also believe that looking-glass fantasy plays off a very powerful universal belief—i.e., there is magic in the world that most of us just can’t see. (Incidentally, it’s the same notion that fuels religions. What I wouldn’t give for someone to write a dissertation comparing the rabid fans of Harry Potter with the devotees of Jesus.)

But reading the Twilight saga made me realize that looking-glass fantasy appeals to an even more powerful universal belief—i.e., the world revolves around me (or, in your case, you), a secret fantasy that each and every one of us has. It’s a very common theme in the looking-glass universe. A protagonist (Alice, Harry, Bella Swan) unexpectedly finds herself at the vital center of a secret, magical world. We, as readers, are prepared to accept whatever outrageous thing happens next because the very premise strokes our egos.

So that’s why I think I found this crappy Twilight series so compelling: because it validates my sick fantasy that I am at the center of the universe.

Unfortunately, the homeless guy who sat next to me muttering about how he wanted to kill everyone in the Borders where I was reading Book 2 DID NOT validate that fantasy. Then again, maybe he was a magical messenger disguised as a deviant so he could deliver a warning, and my new life is about to begin.

freak show

These days, there’s a lot going on, as you know. Putin has moved another step closer to taking over the world. Pakistan is rebooting. Our presidential candidates are hard at work to find an energy plan that is better than Paris Hilton’s.

Yet it seems like all this has been eclipsed by the weird alternate universe that is the Beijing Olympics, where otherwise reasonable people pretend as though they care about badminton and feign surprise and indignation that a country that got ready for the Games by building walls to hide poor people would have the audacity to cheat.

At first, I didn’t want any part of it. I was disgusted by what I call Olympic Fever, with its undertones of nationalism, xenophobia, drug use and, worst of all, interest in sports.

But once I started looking at the Olympics as a first-rate freak show, I have found myself coming around. My a-ha! moment hit me last night, when I was watching NBC ringmaster Mary Carrillo, who must have at one point been a man. Her oddness made me reflect on all the interesting phenomena I've observed over the last few weeks.

Take, for instance, the strange case of beach volleyball. I knew something was off from the first moment I saw it, but it took me a while to put my finger on it. Then it hit me: it looks like it's staged by aliens that are trying to recreate human pastimes. Here are the players, with no shoes and sunglasses, and there is fake sand and the net. It is like a high-tension parody of something you’d see on vacation.

Then there’s women’s gymnastics, which is somehow super depressing and absolutely fascinating at the same time. Women’s gymnastics is like the weird butch cousin of pageantry, with all its associations of perversity, molestation, body dysmorphia, and the crazypants competitive impulse. This sport seems to me, on the sliding scale of human cruelty, not so far removed from genital mutilation or bound feet. These girls end up crippled by the time they hit their mid-twenties and spend the rest of their lives gradually morphing into the shape of a square.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, they prance for our amusement, all stumpy and grim, doing those weird floor dances that make them look like especially agile disabled people. A friend of mine was into competitive gymnastics as a child. Yesterday, she told me she used to get cysts the size of golf balls on her wrists that she would “treat” with a swift thwack from a large book. And that, to me, perfectly captures my idea of women’s gymnastics: a lifetime of disfigurement and self-mutilation in the name of tricks that the human body wasn’t really meant to be doing in the first place.

In the middle of this media circus stands the illustrious Michael Phelps. What I like about this guy is that he isn’t content to let his legend rest upon his five-gazillion medals. Instead, he has invented his own strangely American take on the creation myth, telling the press he eats somewhere between 10-12,000 calories a day, all in junk food like fried egg sandwiches and pizza. I’m no scientist, but I’m almost certain that you can’t eat like and then swim without taking an Olympic-sized dump in your pool.

Michael Phelps is a deceiver!

But I will say that his lies, combined with his visit today to the world’s largest McDonald’s, gave me a rather delightful image of American Olympians, post-contest, lounging around their hotel rooms in huge piles of hamburger wrappers, maybe passed out in pools of ketchup. They deserve a good binge, especially those poor gymnasts, though I’ll bet they end up purging out of sheer habit.

meet my nemesis, el douche

Some months ago, I wrote about the time I came upon the work of my nemesis on the humor page of The New Yorker. Recap: Some douche with one towel belittled me for being a professional writer instead of a “real” (that is, non-paid) writer, and a few years later I got all jealous when I saw that he was published in The New Yorker.

He has now been featured on the humor page three times. Each week, when I open the magazine, I scan the table of contents to see if there’s a new essay by David Sedaris, and then I look for the name of my nemesis. And each week, whether or not I find his name, I am forced to recall his douche face and his one loathsome towel.

In response, I have hatched a cunning plan.

Phase One: R & D
1. Hatch cunning plan.
2. Think up code name for nemesis.
3. Analyze magazine's archived humor pages. Create list of gimmicky topics found.
4. Create list of own gimmicky topics emulating list from step three.
5. Write humor page submission that is gimmicky enough for The New Yorker yet actually funny in real life. (NB: Might not be possible.)

Phase Two: Boo Ya
6. Submit manuscript; get published.
7. Take picture or make video of self rolling around in large pile of my fancy Restoration Hardware towels while reading "my" issue of The New Yorker.
8. Send picture/vid from step seven to El Douche.

What’s that you say? That I am stooping to El Douche’s level by letting his “accomplishments” bother me? That I am fighting a ridiculous one-sided battle that means nothing to no one but me? How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t use rational arguments with someone who is irrational? No one said I’m good at life, people.

Fortunately, as a Southerner who is fond of reality television, I excel at fake feuds and meaningless competition.

another reason to like architecture in helsinki

Prepare to be charmed.


Architecture in Helsinki - Like It Or Not from helsinkids on Vimeo.

the saddest music in the world

Is there anything in the world more pathetic than those lame singer-songwriter types who perform at Potbelly Sandwich Works?

For those of you unfamiliar with Potbelly, I’m talking about a franchise with tasty toasty sandwiches that for whatever reason hosts a parade of d-bags who play on this weird loft level built into every last one of their shops (excluding, mercifully, the one in Midway Airport).

I live across the street from a Potbelly that I visit at least twice a week, and I always order the exact same thing (a vegetarian with no mushrooms or American cheese and a Diet IBC root beer.) I feel like I’m twitching every time I give them my order because it’s so very OCD. So if you’re some random Potbelly performer who googled himself and ended up here, take heart: we all have our problems.

Yesterday I was there eating my signature sandwich when I found myself wondering if every performer is required to create his set list using sort sort of Potbelly songbook, because it seems like they all sing the same stupid shit. Or maybe men who play acoustic guitars badly just gravitate to “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)” by Train. This particular sad bastard was really singing his guts out on that one, like he was driving at night with the windows rolled down singing along to his favorite song...possibly after a long drunken night of karaoke.

I was so tempted to stand up and just start rocking out in front of him like it was a real concert and I was his biggest fan. The very idea made me laugh so hard that I almost choked on my sandwich. I probably deserved to die for even thinking something so mean, but I haven’t laughed that hard in, like, three weeks.

batshit

I hope you’re feeling generous enough to indulge another humorless review, because I just can’t help myself: I woke up this morning, and the whole world was a-hum with the awesomeness of Batman.

If you are one of the ten or so people who has waited longer than I to see The Dark Knight, please be warned what’s below contains spoilers.

Everyone is right in saying this movie revolves around Heath Ledger’s Joker, but it seems strange that his swan song has attracted so much attention without anyone thinking through what made that performance so awfully great. Certainly, his Joker is as ghastly as anything you’ve ever seen in your life—a character so genuinely terrifying that at one point I whispered to Z, “My god, he’s so scary,” and he replied, “I know. I’m sort of glad he’s dead!”

Ledger’s achievement was to successfully toe the line between ridiculous and terrifying, which is exactly right for this complicated villain: he has to convey the former to fully realize the latter. (Could Nicholson’s joker have carried off drag? I think not.) Ledger’s Joker manages to convey a strange charm despite an appearance that suggests he would eat your young. It’s there in every scene, but nowhere is it so powerful as when he invents his own conflicting origin stories that include a fiendish father who sliced him up good and a fit of self-mutilation to console his disfigured wife.

Those scenes make it clear that the Joker was not just the product of Ledger’s incredible acting; he was also the product of the clever imaginations of the Brothers Nolan, who wrote the screenplay. The Joker’s strategically employed “origin stories” were the perfect comment on his particular brand of socio/psycho-pathology: he understands what normal people find stirring and uses it to manipulate their emotions, not only to appear as a sympathetic figure, but also to frighten them silly. Incidentally, this is the reason why Ledger’s Joker is so often compared to Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in A Clockwork Orange: bad guys are far more disturbing when they don’t repulse us (as we expect them to); they are more threatening when they defy our expectations and seem somehow likeable.

I think most conversations about Ledger’s death and the movie are dumb, but I guess it’s one of those topics that inevitably come up. I might have one interesting observation derived from two separate conversations I had with Z: one where we talked about the Joker’s strange death wish, and another where we talked about Ledger’s actual death.

The former came up twice in the movie in two scenes that didn’t quite make sense because as far as I understand the Joker’s philosophy, he should be willing to die, but not wanting to die. So what’s up with his death wish? He first expressed it during the fake climax—the crazy chase scene where the Joker tried to assassinate Harvey Dent. Toward the end, when Batman is barreling toward the Joker on his, uh, giant bat scooter thing, the Joker says over and again that he wants to die. It is not quite a dare; he is ready and welcomes it. And the second scene I'm referring to, of course, was the riff on Russian roulette when Dent becomes Two-Face.

The latter discussion stemmed from Z’s asking me whether HL’s death was a suicide. (A conversation that was, in itself, very amusing because I answered him like I was Ledger’s therapist or friend—as though I could know. Then again, I do read a lot of celebrity gossip magazines.) I told him my sense was that HL had self-destructive tendencies, which is sort of different from suicide.

So then Z raised the question of whether HL could have read those same tendencies into the Joker, which would explain the death-wish discrepancy. I find that idea interesting, especially because so many people assume that playing the Joker affected Heath Ledger. What if, instead, Heath Ledger’s own sensibility affected his portrayal of the Joker? This seems like a far more sensible interpretation.

In any case, I believe the spirit of the Joker was better captured in those amazing seconds—in my mind, among the most haunting in the movie—when he stuck his head of a car window like a dog relishing the feel of wind against his face. The Joker loves chaos and therefore, perversely, loves life. A death wish is much closer to Batman’s morose sense of order (and also his sense of humanity, for that matter).

But what really impressed me about this movie was that it managed to be such a deeply disturbing twist on the idea of an action-based blockbuster. (Again, I give props to the Brothers Nolan for giving me something that I didn’t quite realize existed—a character-driven action movie. Their ear for effective epic-poetic turns of phrase is uncanny.) I left the theater trying to decide if it was as troubling as the last truly creepy movie I saw, No Country for Old Men. They were similar in that they both sustained tension for longer than I would have thought possible, but I think that The Dark Knight gets extra points for being sneakily subversive. It played with genre-based expectations much in the same spirit as the comic, so far as I can tell.

The Dark Knight is also like No Country for Old Men in that I readily forgive much of its clumsy philosophizing. (I less readily forgive its heavy-handed reflection on contemporary themes surrounding terrorism, but Z pointed out that maybe a heavy hand is necessary when you’re trying to get through to the dunderheads who are into summer blockbusters.) And I think TDK surpasses NCFOM in its deft handling of the old ultra-violence. Rarely does one see such a violent movie with so very little gore. Christopher Nolan understands that old rule that violence is much scarier when it is implied, as in the Joker’s videos with the handheld cam that was directed upward whenever he went in for the kill. And the actual violence was always pitch-perfect, as when we saw the Batman imposter dangle from a noose.

And yet, for all that went boom, the movie got a lot of mileage out of its simplest touches. There was, of course, the single most brilliant element of the film: the Joker’s makeup, which was ten shades of awesome. And, to me, the image of Two-Face with a thin layer of bandages over his maimed half (and also the smears of gore on his pillow) were far more effective than the overworked spectacle of exposed bone we saw minutes later.

Finally, I can’t let it go without saying how much I loved seeing an undisguised Chicago throughout the movie. From the banners for the Lyric Opera, to the readily recognizable Chicago skyline, to the “GTA” version of our CTA buses, it seems safe to say Gotham is firmly planted in the Midwest, though I suppose the destructive scenes can’t help but recall a blighted New York.

So maybe the plot was all over the place—a brilliant specimen of the Joker’s much-loved theory of chaos. But I was deeply impressed to see two-and-a-half hours of a sustained air of menace disguised as something that every American would pay to see. Whoever heard of an atmospheric action movie? This Batman pulls off an amazing sleight-of-hand: it inserts humanity just where we don’t want to see it and cuts it away just where we want it the most.

More amazing still, no one has even noticed.

armchair slumming

I woke up to one of those perfect Saturdays. My apartment is preternaturally tidy, even though I had someone over for a very messy dinner last night. (The dishwasher was finally installed. Hurrah!) The weekend highs are in the upper seventies. And, best of all, there is not a damn thing I have to do; the day is all mine.

I love this kind of Saturday.

So after I read the day's news over a couple of Diet Cokes, I spent a leisurely half hour thinking about all the things I could do with myself. I finally decided on something that has been on my list for a while now: today, I will learn about gypsies.

I have long been fascinated by the Roma, who are sort of like glam homeless people. They are dirty, clever, and probably the hippest culture in the entire world. Best of all, many of them play the accordion, my favorite instrument. I would give anything to quit my life and join them, but the sad fact is that I don't like camping of an evening, much less, you know, forever.

So I'm off to buy Bury Me Standing at my favorite bookstore in Chicago. After that, I might return something to J Crew and go see Batman.

I know, gypsies would hate me.

emo machismo

So I have a few thoughts on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the media-bending musical that famously “broke the internet” when too many people tried to watch it the day of its release. My first thought is that the phrase in quotation marks (from the mouth of the Grand Poobah himself, Joss Whedon) seems like appropriate hyperbole given that the most exciting thing about Dr. Horrible, apart from its sheer wonderfulness, is that its popularity suggests that it is possible to shake up the business models for television and movies for the greater good.

But you probably already had that thought yourself. I have some others, too, but consider yourself warned that this review contains spoilers based on my assumption that anyone worth knowing has already watched Dr. Horrible at least twice. If you haven’t, who are you and why are you reading my blog? You either suck or live in a cave.

Just kidding. We can still be friends if you follow my instructions carefully: go watch it (free with commercials on Hulu or for $3.99 in the iTunes store), get drunk, then call me and we’ll sing the songs to each other. In fact, even the people who have already watched it should feel free to do the latter, though I call dibsies on Doogie’s part.

My real jumping-off point here is a very astute point P made over on his blog, where he reviews all things awesome. P appreciates that Dr. Horrible is less a proper hero and more of a “self-centered asshole” who is not so much interested in finding an actual girlfriend so much as pursuing a romantic ideal. The doctor is not exactly a villain disguised as a nice guy; he is a nice guy who becomes too caught up in his own image—a mistake that, critically, turns him into a bad person despite himself. It is tragic posturing.

Let me just pause here to say I know his type all too well. I have been talking about it with my girlfriends for years because it seems like such a paradox: insecure, intelligent, sensitive guys are often among the most egotistical assholes you’ll ever meet. Bravado is lame, but it’s all the lamer when the perpetrators are “nice guys” who actually know better. I hereby christen this phenomenon emo machismo, and the character of Dr. Horrible is its pitch-perfect embodiment.

Even a cursory analysis of Act I bears out P’s “self-centered asshole” hypothesis. The idea is planted in the very first song with the doctor’s (undeniably adorable) plan to build a freeze ray so he can stop time and find the words to talk to a girl. The idea becomes less adorable in the heist scene, when Dr. Horrible throws away the chance to bond with his lady love so he can steal the components for his freeze ray.

The doctor’s misguided reluctance to drop the facade is mocked to brilliant effect in the song “A Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do,” when Horrible and his nemesis, Captain Hammer, sing the same clichéd refrain. What is interesting about these characters is not the ways in which they are different but the similarities they share; Captain Hammer echoes and amplifies all of Dr. Horrible’s worst qualities and inclinations.

P mentioned that there is a raging debate surrounding Joss Whedon and feminism. I don’t know a thing about that (though I’ll grant that Buffy sent some mixed messages and the Dollhouse project raises some questions), but I will say this: any man who makes fun of emo machismo is fighting the good fight in my book.

And as P pointed out, the end also supports the anti-hero interpretation. Horrible achieves what he thought he wanted most: he has embraced his diabolical image, he has been accepted into the Evil League of Evil, he has impressed his peers, and he has finally earned the right to actually wear those rad goggles.

But what makes the whole thing so very great is that the musical’s sly sense of humor is sustained up until the last possible second (when Horrible walks in and greets a hilariously outfitted panel, replete with a villain called Dead Bowie (yes!)), and then all at once that light-hearted self-awareness falls away and we see Billy, bereft, back in front of his computer cutting off what should have been the climax with a simple statement of fact: “I won’t feel a thing.”

The shift in tone is instantaneous—a masterful sleight of hand. And this is why Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a real accomplishment and not just good fun: it is deceptively simple, yet incredibly rich and layered and subtle. I didn’t feel anything when Penny died because that scene was so stylized and silly, but in that last second, when my screen went dark, I was slack-jawed. After I pulled myself together, I marveled at the Brothers Whedon and their powers of manipulation, along with their keen wit and clever genre fucking.

Genius.

Oh, there were other things I liked about it. I like that it was perfectly cast and awesomely acted. I like the costumes and the sets. I like its quotable lines, which I am now fighting the urge to list. I like its attention to detail, like when Captain Hammer sings that someone smells like poo and a homeless guy in the audience nods in agreement. And, of course, I love the songs (particularly “On the Rise,” the opening song in Act II). I especially love their lack of polish, which somehow suggests to me the possibility that, any minute now, the people around me will burst into song and real life will transform into a musical.

I will watch with interest to see what happens next. My friend Z thinks that there should be a Dr. Horrible empire—that this was a terrific origin story, but it is only the beginning.

Me? I’m pretty sure Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog doesn’t need to try to be anything else. It is perfect just the way it is.