Save the Cheerleader

Know the TV show Heroes? With the partly compelling, partly over-the-top commercials that end in the annoying tag line, "Save the cheerleader, save the world?" I've successfully ignored it for two seasons. Until last night.

I have a chip on my shoulder about TV. In general, I think it's stupid. I think watching it is stupid. This probably comes from being a kid with working parents who watched TV instead of doing things like homework and got yelled at regularly when the working parents came home. It also comes from the fact that I really love books and think more people should read them.

And most TV is total crap. Except when it's not and you get addicted for the next five to ten 'seasons' of your life because you need to know whether McDreamy will eventually wake the hell up and quit messing around with that high-maintenance, squinty-eyed moron.

Trouble with not watching any TV is I get completely out of the pop-culture loop, which as a writer means I'm missing out not only on what people are drawn to (and by "people," I mean people who might want to buy my books one day), but I'm also missing out on what people are making. And by "people" I mean the artists who are creating popular culture in the form of TV series. Well, some are artists. Some are hacks.

And all of this is a really, really long preamble to say: Heroes effing rocks.

Dude. They aren't just heroes, they are superheroes. This show is basically ten heroes' journeys unfolding over time. It's research! The show draws heavily from comic books, which are fascinating to me in my work right now.

In fact, over the past few weeks, I've considered re-doing my entire book in a graphic novel format, turning myself and the other characters in my story into a comic book heroes and villains. Last night, I started wondering what my superpower would be. Which was a dinner-table conversation I started with my group in Banff. I asked fifty-year-old women and seventy-year-old men about their superpowers. (The women all said their power would be something about world peace and ending hunger. To which I screamed, "This isn't a beauty pageant, ladies!")

Regardless, in my woo woo way of looking at things, Heroes coming into my life right now is really interesting to me. It affirms a creative direction that has been tugging at my intuition for a while now. What happens next? No clue. I wish my superpower was precognition.