House
I am in love with Greggory House, M.D..
No, my wonderful wife Asenia need not worry about any late-night-dates on his motorcycle, nor Vicodin-spiked Jolt Colas being slipped my way at the pub. Nor will she have to worry about how deep that love runs…for really…no matter how cool he is, he’s still just a television character and really (really) not my type. My wife can sleep well knowing she has all the most wonderful, juicy, feeling, caring, loving bits of my heart. But a tiny, cynical, angry-but-optimistic part does belong to House.
For those uninitiated who have not seen…or for worse yet…not enjoyed an episode of House, this may make little sense. Why I enjoy watching a know-it-all bastard of a man get lucky more times than a high-school-football-star with a keg of beer and his dad’s 2007 Dodge Viper SRT in the Panty-Peeling-Red. (Yes…it’s an actual colour. Oh…sure…they don’t ADVERTISE it as ‘panty-peeling’, but that’s like trying to advertise the Atlantic as ‘Dry’.) It makes no sense, at first, other than to experience the perverse pleasure in watching the ‘bad guy’ win once in a while.
Oh, but House is a good guy.
That’s the conundrum. The enigma. The reason why I won’t yell at someone who says they hate House, because I know not everyone gets it. You see, House is that part of you that gets sick of playing nice. The part of you that KNOWS is right. For good reason. And will fix it no matter the cost…especially to the so called sensitivities of the world. He gets the job done more than motherfucking Dr. Tran. And he doesn’t need horse-buttholes to do it.
I’ve felt this before. My first love of this sort was during a hard time for me…one that most of us non-football-stars-with-panty-peeling-red-Dodge-muthafucking-Vipers students experienced. I’m of course speaking of Highschool, and I’m speaking Johnny. More importantly, Nny got me through highschool with sanity, dignity, and with no cheepo violence-cop-outs. Nny got me through the hardest part of my life before true adulthood. House is the adult version that tells me to take no quarter and keep at it. Both of these characters…no matter how wrong they are…are right. And they’re right in just the right way to help us poor bastards are too damn smart to be helped by the stuff that works on idiots, and too damn stubborn to ask for professional help.
And boy, do they help.
One cannot fix a sucking chest wound with a band-aid, just as one cannot fix all the cracks and fissures of Adolecence with the bible and sing-along. But people try. Some succeed, but others fail and are silent on that fact. Other people…hopefully…read or watch things like Jhonny the Homicidal Maniac and learn something more about themselves. Learn how to fix that angry, nasty beast that grows under too little light and attention. Maybe, like me and countless others, they expose that demon and then lock him up in the closet when its time for the light to reign.
This isn’t saying you, I, or anyone is damaged in some special way, but it’s surprising how many people identify with this kind of thing. Regular people who grew up in a healthy, loving world. Survivors who lasted through terrors far greater than what is depicted in a silly television show or comic book. People with steadfast faith in all they believe, and those who have fallen from the graces they once believed in. It’s not where you came from, or even (to an extent) who you are. It’s what you need. Just like everyone needs air, water and food. Some people need insulin. Some need tampons. And some people need to know they can work-out that dark, cynical part of their heart so it doesn’t decay to the point of rupture and infecting everything else they love.
So, now we have the reason. Back to the answer.
For me, I find I’m always playing the optimistic nice guy. I can rally my anger for an hour and a half, ready to rip into someone, but near the end of it, I always think to myself ‘but what if I just do this instead’ and find a peaceful, quietly logical way. And I’m generally happier that way. And that pisses me off sometimes that I’m happier that way.
House is the kind of character (again, I can’t really say he’s a person, so to speak, because he’s not, and doesn’t need to be for the purposes of self-discovery) who does what he thinks is right, and he does it with absolutely no fear or apology. This comes across as smugness. A superior and abrasive attitude. But where so many people are like that, and so many people completely fail at life…he wins because he is right. No apologies. No excuses. He does what he thinks is right…and he is right.
Now that’s what I love.
I miss seeing Right triumph over Wrong. It’s not so much Good VS Evil anymore, because those concepts mix so often in real life and the better versions of fantasy. I miss seeing people get justice or subtle, poetic revenge. I want to see the cop catch the bad-guy, even if it is too late to save the person they shot. I want to see the mega-corporation CEO holding back a cure for cancer get cancer and die from it…but not before releasing the cure. I miss feeling the unbridled, perfect satisfaction of my idea…my work…my actions resulting in success when everyone said I’d fail.
Ahh. Yeah. I love that feeling, and for now, House is the prescription. I highly recommend it to anyone. It’s a lot cheaper and safer than Vicodin.
Strike Fiss, Studio Shinnyo 2006. Khattam-Shud, EOF.
Posted under Manifestoes
