It's true, my little 'posse' (our group has kept close bonds since halfway highschool, which grants our friendship some nearly 10 years existance now) is the coolest. Right now they're all at a house warming party which I declined the invite to, and was repeatedly urged to go after all, to. But really, I'm exhausted from this past week, and the company that employs me stole a normally quite fruitful evening from me that I *could* have spent working on The Grim DotCom. All day today, I've been mostly asleep, after a taxi indeed drove me back from Amsterdam at 2 at night. I *want* to work on the comic, but really, all I seem to be capable of today is vegetating. So tomorrow will be well-spent, I hope. Because all in all, I turned in 3 days this week that I could have been drawing (Wednesday constituted a well-deserved break since I drew next Monday's Worst Case Scenario which tells the world Joep and I are halfway this crazy enterprise of making the same joke 365 times).
However, I would have liked to have gone. And I hope they all have fun.
But the main reason I bring them up is to give big dibs to my friend Joost, prominent member of our little posse. I mentioned on his birthday recently that I've been trying to get the DVD of the brilliant BBC series Manchild but it's impossible to do without a creditcard. So he ordered it for me (of course I paid him back, but still - it WAS impossible to attain otherwise !) and he brought it along tonight when he came to pick up Viktor to go to the housewarming. So I've been watching it in this warm, exhausted, vegetating slump I'm in, and it's still brilliant.
For those of you who have never heard of or seen this show, shame on you !
It's all about a group of four friends: a stock broker, a dentist for VIPs, an art collector and a decking 'king'. Though different in their lifestyles and interests, they all mainly have their age in common: they've hit the big five-o. And thus the series is all about their midlife crises. Hilarious in itself as the concept is, it's been done brilliant: the stuff these episodes show and tell are insightful, witty, sarcastic, even cynical, but awesome. Each episode breaks down for the audience how the male mind REALLY works. And thus, I would like to state here that this is the one and only 'Sex In The City for men'. It's far from the sentimental crap that SITC keeps popping up, or the pointless theories and other observations, however, exactly like SITC, it's perfectly aimed, full-blast and honestly, at the very focus group it's displaying. SITC is for women, Manchild is for men. Of all ages. Sure, it's about the midlife crisis, but trust me, we ALL THINK LIKE THIS. ALL OUR LIVES. It's brutal, it's honest, it's terribly, terribly insightful, and while watching it you can't help but feel slightly ashamed of what kind of creatures us men are, and at the same time, feel yourself wanting to cheer these guys on. If you haven't seen it, go to the BBC site and order it.
For a while there, there was a series called Mind of the Married Man. Though marketet as 'SITC for men', trust me, it's crap. It's mostly SITC *itself* but ABOUT men. Men who watch this will not get the 'SITC experience' women get out of SITC. It's bogus. It's a cowardly look at a couple of men who, though a slight tad controversial here and there, mainly maintain the image men try to show women of who 'we' are. I watched it for a while, and besides being bored, I was annoyed at it being typecasted as SITC for men. It's not. It's cowardly propaganda, written for, and probably by or with the aid of, women. It's not at all about men. Not a single man I know is HONESTLY like that. Yes, we all ACT like that, but that's not who we are.
Manchild, however, DOES show who we are. And how it all works. Because, after all, divorced men in their 50ies, or deliberately-remained-bachelors at 50, or even married men at 50 (all of which are represented in the little quartet of main characters) have no reason to have ANY qualms about giving in to every hedonistic whim they have. This show is clearly about which head men think with, how we approach any dilemma, how we REALLY view relationships, women, etc - and makes NO apologies whatsoever for it.
I can't wait for series 2 to come out at some point. Meanwhile, excuse me while I continue to vegetate.
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