Break a Leg

Completely Unrelated Editor's Note: Thanks to everyone who went to the TV Week site and wrote Break a Leg as their  favorite show! You're our favorite FANS, so THERE! If you haven't posted a comment, keep sending them in (the link is in the blog below)!

Thanks guys! Words can't describe how much we love you -- but actions can. Which is why we built a whole, super cool ramp -- just for your entertainment.

Thanks!

Now back to your regularly scheduled Jennifer...

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I don't have a lot to say today.  I'm pretty tired.  Shrew is going very well.  I urge any with the ability to come see it to do so.  I have a lot of older women coming up to me after the show and telling me how sexy I am.  And when I say older women, I don't mean the hot older kind.  I mean 60-70 range.  It's a little disturbing.  There's only one weekend left...for which I am sorta glad because once next week is over it'll mean I'll get a day off for the first time on weeks. 
This is going to be another one of those blogs where I just kind of let me mind wander around the general area of my topic while the idea germinates in my mind even as I write it.  And I guess the topic is loosely related to the Liar Blog, so there may be parallels: perhaps not actually stated, but ones that form themselves in your mind through the genius of creation.  And now you're thinking "Why the curse word are you giving us a disclaimer?  Just get on with the bull."  So anyway...

The way I see it, stories are made up basically of 2 things: things we want to happen, and things we don't.  There are the things that are wonderful and good, like love and food and fun, and there are the things that are not so wonderful and good, like plagues and cheaters and stab wounds  A lot of the things in the stories, both good and bad, are completely unlikely to happen or come into being: like dragons or magic or Keanu Reeves' acting ability.  And there are things that, while possible, happen so rarely and so far away that they might as well not happen at all.  The stories don't need these things  to be true for the stories to live on. 

But there is some part of us that wants the impossible to be true, so we tell ourselves stories about killer cricket-playing robots or a guy and his demi-brother and their god for a father.  We want to believe that there are special things that go on without us knowing about it.  And why?  Because, sometimes, life sucks.  Stories tell us that if anything can be true somewhere, then something might be able to be true anywhere.  And that any where just might be where you are.  And that something might make the world just a little bit more tolerable.

But in a story, it's not your life that sucks, it's somebody else's.  You get to ride along with them and watch them suffer, struggle, endure, and usually emerge victorious at the end.  We may empathize with them, but when the shit hits the fan, you can close the book, hit pause, turn the stereo off and go take a dump.   Actually, I like to take the book with my into the loo.  I like something to focus on other than one of the more disgusting realities of being an earthling.

Stories are to inspire, educate, entertain - they make a shape of the world for us to fit our minds into.  It's through the understanding of stories: things which are not true, that we can see what is true about the real world.  It's that whole "mirror up to life thing".  It's like the mice.  It's like...well, it's like a story.

And plus...we would be bored as hell without them.

Happy Jenday!