The meet up was this weekend. Unfortunately I managed to hurt my foot on the walk home from teaching kickboxing Saturday afternoon... Not during kickboxing. No. That would make way more sense. Nope. This was on my walk home.
In any case, it meant that I was unable to play archery tag. I still managed to hit the pub, though, so that was nice. It's always nice to catch up!
Sunday, my kung fu brother Jon swung by and we played CoOpted for a while. It was good. We got stuff done! It's always lovely to see Jon. He has gotten a job in Kingston, and so we don't see him at training any more.
In between meeting friends and editing the videos for Silver Stag this week, I started rewatching M*A*S*H. Binge-watching even.
When I was younger, I had the biggest crush on Alan Alda's Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce. Nothing sexual, of course. I didn't want to bed the guy. But I did imagine myself married to him, or at least working with him and being very respected by him. My idea of a crush, apparently, has less to do with copulation than mutual respect... Any way, my brain decided that someone like Hawkeye Pierce would be an ideal partner in crime.
Watching now, I remember why I adored this show, and his character, so much.
It is genuinely the only show I have watched that can make me weep and laugh in the space of two minutes. It is touching and sweet, awful and heartbreaking all at once. It does a great job of showing the horror of war, without need for gore and screams. The toll is, of course, on the human spirit, and the joy of the show is watching these wonderful, quirky, and sometimes idiotic people thrust together in unnatural and horrifying circumstances deal with their situations.
The setting of this story is massive - the Korean War - but yet it is also incredibly personal. In my very humble opinion, this makes the best stories - seeing the personal struggles in a grand setting.
In any case, I am as enamoured with M*A*S*H watching it now as I was a very young girl, when it was airing on television (reruns, alas, but still).
This is what I want for my writing; for it to be as relevant and as touching thirty years from now as it is today.
Let's hope I can achieve that. In the meantime, I'll continue to binge M*A*S*H. If you see me red-eyed and weepy, you can safely assume it's one of two things - something I've written has made me cry... or I've been watching M*A*S*H.
Right, I have a tonne of work to do.
Ciao!