i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

the bulk of sorority rush started last night, which is sort of disconcerting. hundreds of undergrads running around campus and franklin street in little black dresses. i'm not anti-sorority, i never have been, but i don't think i would have been happy in one and i'm glad i didn't do my undergrad somewhere like carolina where it is a massive part of the undergraduate social life. but i see these little girls, and some of them look so obviously miserable to be going through this, and i want to walk up to them, right in the middle of the lectures from the girls running rush, and say, "why are you doing this, honey? because your mom did it? because you're afraid you won't have friends if you don't? that's stupid. if you don't want to do this, don't. you'll have friends. you'll be happy."

i can't, of course, but i think about it whenever i see them. and last night i almost ran one over on my way home from campus - she was walking IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET - and it just. i don't get it. i really don't. and it makes me sad that some of these girls think they have to do this, when they really don't.

anyway. due south. etc.


so the thing is, bob fraser is REALLY WACKY. i mean, he just turns up in the back of the riv and fraser's like, are you dead? and bob says, yeah i am, and fraser's like, all right then, if you say so, dad. and the first scene where vecchio is talking to fraser and bob is talking to him at the same time? i mean, we see that scene a hundred times over the course of the series; fraser talking to one ray or the other AND bob at the same time. but the first time it happens, it's so fresh and ridiculous and vecchio just sits there and takes it. it's a perfect moment.

and "gift of the wheelman", which is on the whole sort of a blah kind of episode, but well, i like bob fraser and i like fraser trying to work out all his father issues (and man, he's got a boatload of them, doesn't he?), and so i liked it. plus, the idea of all these weird canon things that i take for granted happening for the first time, totally a laugh a minute.

you know what else about season one? before paul gross, ultimate cheapskate, took over, they actually filmed in chicago. not always - there are lots and lots of shots that are clearly either a.) studio or b.) toronto - but there are plenty of shots that are chicago. and that's comforting. doesn't change the fact that i keep writing fic, trying to fix the later seasons in terms of chicago, but regardless.

and also? PAUL GROSS IS REALLY FUCKING HOT. like, scorching sun burn your retinas hot. the leather jackets! the jeans! the brown uniform! the forearms! nnnnnngh. *incoherent gurgle*

all that said: there's kind of a run of boring episodes right in the middle of s1, isn't there? the three or four episodes that lead up to "the wild bunch", which was spot on, spectacular, wonderful. but the four or so episodes before that, eh, i don't know, i sort of zoned out with them on. didn't have much to grab me. is that just me, or is that anybody else?

one thing about ray vecchio: i wish we saw more of his family. we see frannie a couple of times, but, you know, he's got family, whereas rayk doesn't, and we see very little of them in the first season. i wish we had seen more of his family. and more of frannie.

the wild bunch: fraser, sitting in the animal control room with dief. talking about how maybe dief stayed in chicago out of a misplaced sense of duty; oh, the look on his face, the parallels to fraser staying in chicago. there are a lot of moments when i have a hard time believing that ray kowalski, as so much fic supposes, could move up to canada for good; he's too tied up in chicago for me to believe that. but at the same time, i can't believe that fraser would stay in chicago, either. would come back to chicago post call of the wild. and that scene with dief, and his lines, and then the look on his face when dief bit him. oh, my heart, my heart. it was a perfect scene. perfect. and the look on fraser's face when vecchio offers him the bullets. and. oh. i loved that episode. i loved that episode a lot.

mark smithbauer's sort of an asshole, isn't he? i mean, he's just not very nice. but the scene in fraser's apartment, with fraser in his doofy red long johns, and mark standing up, not quite every looking at fraser, and his hands. he keeps twisting his hands together, and it's just heartbreaking. and the two of them, mark lying on the bed and fraser on the floor, talking about old times. it's just. it makes me want to read cee's mark stories, that's what, because that's what made me love mark even more than this episode. the episode is stunning, but cee's stories are what made mark real for me. and the fact that he was real before this episode, just made the ending even more crushing.

and the pond! and fraser on ice skates in his uniform! and vecchio falling over on his skates! omg. totally my favorite episode so far this season.

season one fraser feels real to me. he's still got that crazy rigid fraser moral code, but he's more human. a continued feeling that season one fraser is less supermountie, more actual fraser. i like that.

i am sort of putting off watching any more episodes for now, with the inevitability of victoria's secret weighing heavily in the future, but i'm also sort of in it for the long run, now, and i don't think i could stop watching if i tried.


here's a tip, though, due south writers: you ever write about ray or the other ray and fraser driving on a highway in chicago? ain't nobody in chicago drives on numbered highways. they drive on the dan ryan and the kennedy and the edens and the eisenhower and the stevenson. those highways have numbers, too, but nobody who's a chicago native will ever, ever, ever use the numbers instead of the names. but don't ask me which is which - i'm not a native, i don't fucking know, and the last time i tried to take the eisenhower out to the west side, i ended up in milwaukee instead.

in entirely unrelated news, sometimes dusty baker is really smart (see also: thanks beautiful at third base, even though i don't really want to think about aramis ramirez's future with the cubs if nomar is moving to third permanently) and sometimes he is really fucking dumb. ribbit rusch took a perfect game into the seventh last night, and then he lost it, and then dusty left him in an inning too long, and then. yeah. fucking cubs. they won last night, but man. fucking cubs. fucking bob and len. goddamnit. i hate the fucking cubs.

a couple of weeks ago somebody at school told me that dusty was too hard on his pitchers, that's why he couldn't win the big one, and i don't necessarily agree - he's why kerry wood's finally having surgery, which he's needed for years, and that's a good thing. but he lets his pitchers get away with too much, that's his problem - there's merit in letting a guy tell you needs to come out, with letting a guy who's got his stuff going tell you that he wants to stay in, but it ain't no everyday thing. you can't let your pitchers tell you every day that they're good for eight innings, 'cause there's no way in hell they are.


i've started watching the shitty wgn ten pm news just because i get to see home. how pathetic is that?

what is with me and these epic entires lately? i have no idea. sorry, kids.