Listen I don’t think I have a Heated Rivalryproblem. I just have a Heated Rivalry thing.
It’s not like I spent hundreds of dollars on jerseys for fictional hockey teams this morning when the official merchandise store reopened after being sold out for months (just one hundred + 12.64 on one t-shirt, 2 magnets, and some blue socks with bananas).
It’s not like I’ve bought all Rachel Reid’s books in hard copy and digital (only digital so far).
It’s not like I’ve ordered multiple copies of the official double-vinyl soundtrack and book with annotated scripts and color picture inserts (only one copy of each).
Did I buy a pewter loon for my charm necklace? Yes, I did.
Did I have quinoa pudding for breakfast because that’s one of the super-healthy things Eric Bennett eats in Common Goal, book four in the Game Changer series? Yes.
Did I start eating (and really enjoying) farro because it’s one of the things Shane Hollander eats in his (possibly-disordered) diet in The Long Game? Yes.
Did I buy Laufey’s new album because of the music video featuring Hudson Williams? Sure.
Did I buy a PWHL Ottawa Chargers Pride shirt because [SPOILER ALERT] the Ottawa team in the Game Changers books plays an important role? Yes.
Some arm candy I made with the first letter of lines in a scene in Heated Rivalry which I have taken to mean ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT.
But listen. I have not and will not buy a Peloton machine or subscription even though Hudson Williams’s commercial is pretty watchable.
I am not switching back to Verizon based on Connor Storrie’s butt’s ad.
I have not put the release dates for the soundtrack and script books on my calendar.
I did not even TRY to buy Red Sox tickets for Heated Rivalry night at Fenway later this summer.
I mean, sure. I have reheated (rewatched) all the episodes and re-reid (reread) all the books so many times I have completely lost track. And I have been spending entirely too much time on Threads (which I’ve seen referred to as the Heated Rivalry group chat many, many times).
I started a blog post draft a few weeks ago trying to explain to myself why the show seemed to have such a hold on me, and why it annoys me that some people in the fandom think I’m too old at 60 to be so into it (seriously—I don’t want to DATE any of them—and if I met the young stars or that wily genius Jacob Tierney the first words out of my mouth would be “You shouldn’t be smoking.”)
This on Threads was one of those “I feel seen” moments:
I might go back and try to figure out more about WHY I love it so much, but it’s mainly this:
Jacob Tierney, who adapted and directed the series, has said in multiple interviews and venues he wanted to bring forth queer joy. And horniness. The horniness is important because there is too much puritanical bullshit going on. And the queer joy is important because part of being 60 is remembering when we learned about AIDS and how awful Ronald Fucking Reagan was about AIDS and how we lost pretty much a generation. I try very hard to be a good LGBTQ ally (always happy to learn more), and I don’t know if my own joy is an acceptable offering, but here it is: this show has brought me SO MUCH JOY.
This post is at least partly about my extremely high comfort level with announcing what brings me joy. And I’m fishing a little—is there ANYONE I know in real life who wants to hang out and TALK about this show? Should I push for a Heated Rivalry Trivia Night?
Also in the meantime, all this has made me think about other loadbearing hyperfixations I’ve had over the years, a surprising number of which are Canadian, the first of which, chronologically, was Jesus of Montreal.
Denys Arcand’s 1989 movie hit me hard and stayed with me.
Denys Arcand’s 1989 movie hit me hard and stayed with me. It was so clever and layered and really provocative. I was an English professor for a bunch of years, and when I taught Religion in Literature or the Bible and Literature, I sometimes showed it, and I was so excited by Adele Reinhartz’s very scholarly and wonderful Jesus of Hollywood I am pretty sure I wrote her a fan email. I used to watch it yearly for Holy Week, and I once even tried to structure some out-of-church-but-kind-of-like-church discussions of the movie. (Those didn’t catch on.)
Boy did I feel smug when I taught I Shot Andy Warhol (not for the religion or Bible classes) and recognized Lothaire Bluteau.And thus begins the interconnectedness of my hyperfixations. One of Bluteau’s more recent credits is Canadian Sniper, which I watched because of a Heated Rivalry’s François Arnaud.
Arnaud was asked in an interview which of his works he might want people to seek out and he said The Winter House with Lili Taylor (who played Valerie Solanas in I Shot Andy Warhol, which was directed by Mary Harron, who also directed Alias, Grace, which starred Paul Gross). The Winter House was fantastic.
Between Jesus of Montreal and Heated Rivalry, there were the PAUL GROSS years, which began, I think, with Slings and Arrows. I live in a theater town (Spring Green, Wisconsin, home of American Players Theater–you should come visit!) and at some point so many of my theater friends were raving about Slings and Arrows I had to watch. It is a show that is wonderful for so many reasons, but Paul Gross as Geoffrey was a nearly transcendent spectacle. I haven’t done a rewatch recently, but I will soon because Jacob Tierney is in one of the seasons and I don’t remember him at all from it.
O, Paul Gross. Jesus of Montreal might be the first chronologically of my Canadian loves , and Heated Rivalry might be first for intensity (and adjacent merch purchases), but in terms of persistence, I will just say I spent YEARS hunting down PG’s obscure movies (of inconsistent levels of awesomeness). You lay down your hand of Passchendaele, Gunless, Hyena Road, Wilby Wonderful, and Eastwick and I will win this round by countering with H2O, Murder Most Likely, Cold Comfort, and Getting Married in Buffalo Jump.
When my son was a little guy, we watched sooooo many episodes of Due South. My husband and I still say “Understood” in a very Benton voice.
I am waiting for him to make some sort of public utterance about Heated Rivalry, maybe mentioning that he made a curling movie (Men With Brooms, which I LOVE) instead of a hockey movie because they couldn’t afford the crowds and didn’t have the technology our favorite show’s creators now have. I don’t think everyone in Canadian film and entertainment knows each other except they kind of do.
I’m not the only one thinking about him in reference to Heated Rivalry. Someone brought him up just today on Threads. And there’s this, from The Beaverton where they talk about why the show took off and how they love not knowing who the actors were and then giggle about Paul Gross somehow showing up:
[I absolutely HATE fancasting or I would mention there’s a villain role in the Game Changer books he’d be perfect for.]
In addition to all the Paul Gross tentacles, Slings & Arrows also gave me Sarah Polley (I love her book. I watch her movies. I would talk to her about our shared history with scoliosis if I met her. Also she was also in a movie with Jacob Tierney) and Luke Kirby (so amazing in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Take This Waltz, with Michelle Williams AND DIRECTED BY SARAH POLLEY). I know other people knew Rachel McAdams from other things, but this was my first exposure. I also had never seen Kids in the Hall but loved Mark McKinney as the beleaguered/clueless managing director of the theaters in Slings and Arrows.
The Beaverton folks are making fun of him, but one must admit he’s aged well.
Liz Duff (pop culture aficionado, podcaster, big on the Tik Tok but I follow her on Threads) is suggesting/pleading for people channel their Heated Rivalry fan energy into watching other Canadian television shows that aren’t getting as much attention (i.e. every other Canadian television show).
This seems like a fantastic idea. I am loving Letterkenny and North of North is moving up my to-be-watched list very quickly. But those shows have to fit in between my ongoing reheatings of Heated Rivalry. I will not tinker with the joy it brings me, not when my life has been really life-ing at me lately and this stupid world is just [gestures everywhere].
I probably do need to write some more about his show because I realize there are so many characters and actors I haven’t mentioned at all. So many moments. So much beauty. So much joy.
So much joy.
Drop me a comment if you think I should follow up on any of the above or something else I haven’t even thought of or any of these:
Canadian, Sniper is a movie I would recommend with about 40 caveats,
Heated Rivalry is helping me heal my lifelong Francophobia,
Rewatching and rereading are perfectly valid methods of emotional regulation,
All the reasons women love MM fiction & film,
The Heated Rivalry cookbook idea I have (including cocktails), which I actually hope someone else just does so I can buy it.
I mean obviously you can break the law but I can’t so what if I park legally and holler at you so long as I don’t call you a fat boi? No? Not even if I promise? Maybe just my bumper stickers say things you don’t like on a public street? I guess not. So how about I sit in my car at home and scream with helplessness and rage if I leave the windows up? What if I just sit there real quiet but think angry thoughts? No? What if I sit on my couch with my cat and write a poem? Oh that’s right. You kill poets. What if I decide you are right about everything? Except attesting to something and not believing it might kill me, might give me a fact aneurysm, cognitive dissonance made flesh, a little emotional infarction, a pulmonary symbolism? Is it o.k. if I die quietly? Yes? O.k.
It’s not that I like rejection. I vacillate between responding well to it or ignoring it or putting it in the appropriate context and then sometimes taking it personally and deciding it’s a sign I’m the biggest loser. Or not even the biggest loser, just a pitiful loser, too pitiful to be the biggest loser.
But I keep putting myself and my writing out there, and that involves A LOT of rejection.
This Sunday, I’m presenting the amalgamation/transformation of rejection from a couple of places–a poetry book competition and a playwriting competition. Both were encouraging, but the answer was no.
I have this idea I’ve been working on since 2021. I write plays and poetry and want my plays to get produced and my poetry to get published. Somehow, in the month before I was set to have a hysterectomy (which coincided with a book competition deadline), I decided I should combine narrative poems written in the voices of particular characters into a play.
Wouldn’t that be cool? I thought and still think, to have a play that works well onstage and a book you could just open up and read the poems in order or randomly or whatever.
I got the manuscript done in time for the deadline, had the surgery, started attending a food behavior class from UW Eating Disorders Clinic, and went back to work, etc. etc. etc.
Since then, I’ve started and finished a lot of other projects (started way more than I’ve finished, if I’m honest). But the play-made-of-poems stayed in my head. It’s called Impelled. Here’s the news release I wrote & the poster I’ve been sharing on social media & putting up various places:
NEWS RELEASE:
There’s a lot of drama—and poetry—in an ordinary day.
Impelled, a new play by Marnie Bullock Dresser, premieres onstage in Spring Green on Sunday, April 27 at the Gard Theater from 2-4, with a staged reading and a talkback. Terry Kerr is the director for the one-act play set on the campus of a formerly-Baptist college. An administrator tries to help a student and a professor is sort of helpful, but under the surface of the everyday, these three characters express a huge range of thoughts and feelings and questions.
The actors for the staged reading are Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson, all familiar to audiences in the River Valley and Madison theater scenes.
Marnie has published poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and journalism, and taught English at UW-Richland for more than 30 years.
Impelled is made up entirely of poems. But also jokes, sex, food, and God. By the end of the day, our characters are not just indulging in really good barbecue from a food truck on campus; it’s almost as if they have gathered together for communion.
A grant from River Valley Arts provided the opportunity for table reads, revision, editorial feedback, and the staged reading itself.
Note: due to adult themes and spicy language, the play is not recommended for those under 17.
I’ve been sucking it up and ignoring the awkwardness I always feel when I’m self-promoting. Yesterday I recorded a segment which I think will appear tomorrow morning on WRCO’s “Morning Show,” which you can listen to live or later.
All this is made possible by two things:
retirement means I can spend time not just on writing, but also on follow-through (the thing I struggle with the most, and the thing I found most impossible when I was working full-time).
I got an Artistic Development grant from River Valley Arts, a wonderful organization you should consider supporting.
It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.
I’m hoping Sunday’s staged reading will lead to more good stuff for Impelled, but even if that’s somehow the end of the line, it’s been an amazing ride to get to work with the poet Rita Mae Reese on editorial feedback, and with Terry Kerr as my director, and three fabulous actors: Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson. I asked my cast in an email if they had a word or a sentence they thought of when they thought of Impelled. Hannah said “rhapsody,” which honestly makes me feel rhapsodic, and Doug said “It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.” And he included a picture, which I think is a good way to end this particular post:
We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of when I wrote a poem every day in April to help raise money for Tupelo Press. I wrote about it here.
I’ve been slow about finishing the odes for some of the local businesses who were nice enough to host my poetry pop-up shop. It’s very much connected to how much interaction I got–on the days when people just kind of smiled nicely and didn’t stop to talk or donate or buy some coasters, I was able to write the ode while I was on site.
But several places people were super interested and talkative, and it was harder to get anything much written. That was good though!
But as always, it’s hard for me to avoid procrastinating. And then when I did sit down to write, I put all kinds of pressure on myself to write A REALLY GOOD ODE.
In any case, I’m getting them done. Here’s one I wrote for The Slowpoke Lounge in Spring Green.
Since it took me so long to finish it, I decided I should make a fabric collage/poetry frame (which was one of my giveaways for people who donated at a certain level last spring). I’d recently organized my fabric stash, so was very glad to find these pieces to use.
More of last spring’s odes and new ones coming soon.
Should I do it again this April? Have pop-up shops & write local odes as thanks for my hosts?
The penny will certainly live with the dodo in the part of heaven reserved for extinct things if I defend it. I have a knack. I never vote right in the primaries, and Tommy Herr was traded to the Twins the week after I got his Cardinals card. Nonetheless, I can't quietly watch the penny become the business of second hand shops and children bored with monopoly money.
It has in its favor these things: its name, the name of a girl or a lane; its color, the sign of good plumbing; its heft, just right for dead eyes; its love of prime numbers, seventeen cents and forty-one cents and seventy-three; its president, symbol of my native Illinois, a hard working man who would respect me for saving my pennies and rolling them up and spending the quarters I get in exchange in Laundromats and newsstands only; the only president to wear a bow tie on his coin, the only one tall enough to carry off a coin worth so little, worth one more than nothing, worth saving.
[This poem is actually 25 years old or more. Relevant again.]
Dick Van Dyke isn’t from Southern Illinois where I’m from, but I do have a remote connection because my Aunt Pat dated him when they were both in high school in Danville, Illinois. She wasn’t my Aunt Pat then, and would never have been my aunt if she’d stayed with Dick Van Dyke, but I didn’t understand that at first–I remember saying “You mean if she hadn’t married Uncle Leroy, Dick Van Dyke could’ve been my uncle?” Nope, because Leroy (who later went by Foster and became an art professor in Texas among many, many other things) was my blood relation, my Gran’mommy’s brother.
Uncle Leroy and Aunt Pat at (I assume)their wedding.
Of course Dick Van Dyke feels like family because I’ve known about him my whole life; Mary Poppins was released not quite a year before I was born. He’s just always been there.
I’ve been thinking about Dick Van Dyke because of the director’s cut released last week of the Coldplay song “All My Love.” Honestly, it’s the most I’ve ever listened to or thought about Chris Martin. Not that I disliked him or his band before–just hadn’t really entered my attention span much. Watching Chris Martin with Dick Van Dyke in that video and then both of them on Jimmy Kimmel, it was so clear they have a real friendship, that they’re both incredibly talented, and what a gift to see such a rich tribute to the man for his 99th birthday, not for his passing, which as he says, could be any day (and it sounds as if the current fire season almost made that day happen this week–news stories report that neighbors helped him and his wife evacuate, and they’re back now & only minor damage to a guest house–and all pets accounted for).
Today is Dick’s 99th birthdays and the official video was released, but honestly, I like the director’s cut better.
I think I’ll return to it for comfort as the years go by. The mix of music and dancing and family and that light in his eyes, along with the still very solid clown work he’s got going–well worth revisiting.
I feel like I’m forgetting some important ones, but these are the ones I revisit when I need to get revved up or remind myself what’s important or just need some comfort and joy. And even though I’m not related to him, I’m happy to have one more way Dick Van Dyke is adding comfort and joy to my life. Thanks to everyone involved in the video for that, and thanks to the neighbors who got him in his car!
What are some of your fave comfort/rev up videos? Post a link in the comments!
In April I pledged to write a poem every day to raise money for Tupelo Press. I met my fundraising goal (although as I’m re-reading the post, I hadn’t YET met the fundraising goal–but I did) and more importantly, wrote my way through the month preceding my father’s death from Alzheimer’s.
One of the things I did to “get the word out” was have Poetry Pop-Ups at various local businesses. Very grateful to them! NOTE: image says “this week” but that was way back in April….
Here’s the first poem, for Arcadia Books in Spring Green:
AN ODE TO ARCADIA BOOKS
As if drawn close by a copy of Silent Spring, three eagles are circling on a thermal above the shop, the white on them flashing when their circuit brings them into the sun. That particular magic’s stopped, but inside, on newly reconstructed floors, the hefty spells of ten thousand books just carry on. Maybe some new recipes to cook, a caramel latte, that novel you’ve been looking for, they’re all here. The Driftless Stargazing guy stopped by to say hello—I’m so happy for him that reading is disconnected from teaching now, that pleasure’s why he’s here. That pleasure brought all this into being, the creak of a wooden floor, the smell of caffeine and new paper, a zillion words just waiting to be seen.
I think odes are really important–they’re celebratory, and in a challenging time, it’s more important than ever to find things to celebrate, to be grateful for. I’ve been practicing making bracelets (still working on those knots!) and wanted to make one with a message to myself. I chose Warren Zevon’s quote from Letterman, when Dave said “now do you know something about life and death that I don’t know” and Zevon answered, “I know how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.” So I’m using odes to celebrate all kinds of things and yes, I want to enjoy every sandwich.
marniere 