Category: blog

I wrote a sonnet about a TV show that’s been on for a while.

I have really been enjoying the “Arrowverse” shows, Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl. They’re so much fun, in large part because they so gleefully embrace their inherent silliness and absurdity.

I‘m hoping to get fully caught up with all of the shows in that universe before I watch the big Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event, so I was overdue to get started on Legends of Tomorrow, which debuted in 2016. So I watched the two-part pilot.

And it’s pretty dopey. I may or may not trudge through the whole series, but the pilot was definitely rougher than the shows off of which it is spun. Maybe it’ll get better.

I was looking for an excuse to write a sonnet. And I thought it would be fun to pick a subject that wasn’t all that important. And “Legends of Tomorrow” fits so well into a line of iambic pentameter. Although, it turns out I didn’t actually use the title in the actual sonnet, but NO MATTER.

Here you go. A two-part, non-rhyming sonnet. About a TV pilot. About superheroes. You’re welcome.

Let’s put aside the fact that Snart and Mick
Are not endowed with any superpowers;
But only have the fancy guns they stole
From heroes on another show. The team
To which they’ve been conscripted has been told
By some time-hopping malcontent that none
Of them have value on their own, and must
Abscond into the past to thwart the plans
Of some immortal fascist demigod
Before he murders billions decades hence.
It’s only then that these fantastically
Empower’d also-rans will find a sense
Of worth. I think that’s just a bit absurd.

There’s Ray, a supergenius billionaire
Who built a suit combining powers of Mans
Both Iron and Ant. The odd couple that forms
Into a human conflagration? Holy crap!
The oft-respawning duo with the wings
Would seem to me to be a pretty damn
Big deal. And Sarah Lance! She once was dead!
And now she’s not! And smashing many heads.
It takes a special kind of asshole to convince
These Legends that they’re both of no import
Yet also indispensable. Come on.
I simply can’t believe how easily they’re duped.
(And what was up with Martin drugging Jax?)
They’d have been fine if they had just stayed put.

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I grew up under a strange and rather painful contradiction. Those who loved me told me I was special, that I had greatness in me. My peers told me I was garbage, that I was beneath them. As a result, I spent a lot of energy just trying to pass as ordinary, hoping that my latent greatness would get its chance to shine later on.

I guess I’m still doing that, except now it’s with the awareness that there’s a lot less “later on” left, and coming to terms with the possibility that the greatness is really more like “just-okay-ness.”

Devin Kelly writes:

Think of how young you were when you first thought you had to be the hero of your own story. I must have been barely older than a baby. My father called me maverick. It made me feel like a rebel. I wanted to be a star. I had to win at all costs. And yet: when was the last time anyone ever told a man to be ordinary? Think of the difference that would make, to begin to dismantle our need to be heroes, to finish things, to consider ourselves defined by accomplishment…

While no one is encouraged explicitly to be ordinary, it’s pretty obviously and vigorously implied. But I do not think we are ever encouraged to be extra-ordinary. We are told to excel, to achieve, to be great. Great, but not different. Be the same as everyone else, but be better at it.

What if you’re decidedly extraordinary, as in un-ordinary, but not quite great? Oddness can be forgiven if it comes with a superpower. You can be weird, sub-ordinary, if you truly excel at something. But not if you’re “just okay” at a few things.

Those of us who are weird and just-okay at things can be envious of the ordinary. Astounding no one, but not disappointing anyone either.

No one should feel pressured to be ordinary. But nor should anyone feel like a failure for not being great. What we should encourage in others, and aspire to for ourselves, is to be at peace with who we already are, and utterly free to discover what we might be.

We may discover more ordinariness. We may discover greatness. We may discover flaws and deficits. But whatever we find, we should be free to feel we are enough.

There were more than 160,000 new coronavirus cases today in the United States. In the span of 24 hours, a number of people equal to the population of Alexandria, Virginia were revealed to be infected. Yesterday, they hadn’t been counted yet. These cases, all 160,000-plus, are new today.

Tomorrow, there will probably be just as many new cases, if not more. These will all be from people who already have it, whether they know it or not, but will be counted anew tomorrow. We don’t know how it will compare to today, but it’s a safe bet that it’ll be another Alexandria, more or less. In one day.

What the hell is going on? What are people doing? I know there are more than enough deniers and reckless people who simply don’t care to keep this disease spreading. I get that people are being idiots and refusing to take basic precautions, having close indoor gatherings even when they know they shouldn’t. But 160,000 new cases in just one day?

Are people just getting together and hocking mucous-globs into each other’s mouths? Are people going around in public licking doorknobs and other people’s faces? Is there an explosion of meetings where thousands of people get together for casual, serial French kissing with arbitrary partners?

I get that we in the United States are screwing up this pandemic, I really do. But how can it be this bad?

And at what point does it become inevitable that we’re all going to get it? Are we already there?