Getting hip to the liveness

I'm home configuring my new PowerBook, and I've got NBC on. The Will and Grace season premiere is a special live episode. For the past few months, I suppose it's natural that my ears perk up a little whenever any noun is modified by that adjective. I'm working for a company with live entertainment on the brain and not much else, after all. So I asked the question, "Why do we like LIVE?"

Here are my thoughts:

1. Even though I find the writing on this show to be predictable and tired in its campiness, I also applaud it for making the mention of sexual behaviors acceptable in prime time. I also think Alec Baldwin is bomb ass. And seeing him give in to the swish a little is fun. No matter how much I fight it.

2. I just cut the fuck out of my finger a few minutes ago. See? I was on the phone with my mother trying to cut a piece of french bread into appropriate sandwich size, and the cerrated edge of my Cutco sandwich knife sawed vigorously into my left index finger. My mom got an earful of cursing. And then she gave me lots of advice about putting a bandage on the cut. And she made all the Chinese pain sounds in her vocabulary -- she seriously sounded like it was hurting her more than it hurt me. So we got off the phone, and I dripped blood all over the floor, and I won't be playing violin tonight.

3. "Live" is thrilling, I guess, because of the propensity for the unexpected to happen. The biggest laughs in the show and the most satisfying moments happened when the actors broke or when something didn't go as planned. It makes the audience feel like they're on the inside of something private and exclusive. Like when Tim Conway and Harvey Korman used to not be able to keep their shit together on The Carol Burnett Show. Even though uptight theatrical types will point out that this is just evidence of their unprofessionalism. Well, those two dudes tour around doing stage shows for $100 a seat, and you're still toting your little Ben Nye make-up kit to rehearsals for a community theater production of an Agatha Christie play that will be put up on a cleared-out portion of the dining room of an Acapulco Restuarant, bub. (Note: I do actually find it unprofessional when Horatio Sanz and Jimmy Fallon pull this same boner. But that's because they're not as funny. Nor as white.)

4. It's a shame Don Adams passed away. I enjoyed him very much. And it was in a discussion about how much I enjoyed Inspector Gadget that I was reminded of how I used to also like Danger Mouse.

5. I guess I'll go finish making that finger sandwich now. It was going to be a chicken cutlet (katsu, if you speak the language) sandwich. But I may not have it in me to fix that up anymore. Maybe I'll just have a Pop Tart.

This is the liveness that happens in my brain all day long. Seriously.