But the most profound thing I read about 9/11, and the thing that made me shake my head and say “yes,�� was this, from the New York Times web site:

“What is amazing is that in that moment, there was a moment before that we saw that plane, that second plane, and there was a moment after, and it’s like two different worlds, those two moments. I mean, literally, I can feel like I can remember the exact second when the whole world changed and my life changed forever.��

There was that moment, and whether you were watching on TV or live, whether it happened as you saw the plane slide into the second tower or you heard a newscaster or saw a newspaper or listened to a friend recount the story, you knew, as soon as you received the information, you knew your life had changed.

I detailed this day, very intensely, in my book. I was just graduated, unemployed, feeling hopeless and miserable about life in general. I felt fat. I felt like my life would never take up the promise that had been all but assured me on entering Georgetown. I felt like, for the first time, my decision not to go into medicine might have been a fatal mistake. And then my mother called, screaming, insisting that I turn on the television because there had been some sort of accident at the Twin Towers and we didn’t know where my sister was and she had to go �� and the phone cut off. I tore out of bed and ran downstairs to find only one channel of television working.

And I saw it. One building on fire. An accident. A horrible accident. Those poor people, those poor people in the building. How horrible, how horrible that a plane happened to hit another structure full of innocent lives, I thought.

Until the black wasp, that shadow, appeared on the left side of the screen, slid into the second tower so smoothly, so effortlessly. That was it. That was the moment. There was a me before that moment and a me after that moment and they are vastly different people, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

Because how do you measure something that big as it’s happening? You don’t. My only way out into the world during that horrible day was the Internet. The Internet worked and that’s all I needed to know: I ran toward it and it ran toward me, filling my screen with messages of support, hope, and love, from this new tiny little community I had joined online: the Harry Potter fandom. They kept me going that day. They kept me sane and functioning. They helped me through not knowing where my sister was, not knowing where my father was, getting conflicting reports about the evacuations, thinking the White House had been hit, hearing there was another hijacked plane over Boston, from looking out my window in Staten Island and wondering when our little town would go up in flames.

I realize today that I think about that day a lot. There is the obvious change that won’t ever be lost on me: that on that day 10 years ago I was an unemployed college graduate with little career prospects who had barely dipped a toe into the Harry Potter world and now I am a New York Times bestselling author who runs several companies and is living in London part of the time, working on an official project of J.K. Rowling’s. I mean, this has not escaped me and I am grateful for my luck and the hard work I’ve done to foster that luck every day. (Luck is nothing without hard work, and for all the luck I’ve had I am more grateful than anyone knows that I learned early the value of hard work, or my life wouldn’t have taken these turns.)

But that day was about far more than a turning point for me personally. I think about being pinned to the computer and recognizing that the Internet wasn’t just a way to pass my jobless time. It could help, shape, change lives. That the things we put online and the way we interacted there mattered, that how we created and fostered and treated our community would mean a lot to people in very real ways.

I look today at all that has happened since, and not just with my personal career and life growth �� but with Leaky, with the things we are doing with LeakyCon, with the partnerships we have made and communities we have helped bridge. I look at our charity work, which has �� 100% literally �� saved thousands of lives. I look at the people in Doctor Who costumes and going to Nerdfighter gatherings at LeakyCon. I look at the general tenor of LeakyCon, which was to provide people a place they could fully be themselves. At the live podcasts we’ve done, the sites we’ve created, the books we’ve written, the lives we’ve touched, the friendships we’ve enabled �� all of it, at least for me, came from that day when I realized on some subconscious level that time spent creating an online home for fans was a worthwhile activity. It’s now the main focus of my life.

It’s my own little contribution to the truism that strength and prosperity can come from the hardest days. I don’t pretend to be even half as closely devastated by that day as those who lost people, those whose lives had severe personal or economic hardship since. I am one of the lucky ones. But I’m also lucky enough to have been close enough to it to witness and feel the change. Even if 9/11 is always a ghostly day of horror in my mind, what has come since has been a feeling of power, a feeling of importance in our everyday lives, a feeling that it can all be gone in an instant, and most of all a certainty, so deep and strong you never even have to acknowledge it, that the only way to honor those who lost everything is to live with everything you have.

My thoughts, prayers and love go out to all of you today.

Isn’t it funny how easy it is for us all to see Glee’s problems and how hard it is for teh creators to take constrcutive criticism? They’re happy to respond when somehting explodes in a good way (Darren being awesome and being worthy of inclusion in everything and getting more solos than LM) but now that the chorus is rising in unison on what is wrong with the show and how to fix i,t they’ve got their fingers stuck in their ears.

Though I would say the most recent eopisode, with the Loser song, did a lot to address all these ideas, these points that this show is and should be about the scruffy startups who are struggling through high school and getting by by singing about it.

However, I was watching the singing of "Loser" again and was struck with the irony that if you were to not know who these kids are at all, and walk in on them singing this song, it would ring remarkably untrue. Only two of them are overweight and only one of those two isn’t "traditionally" beautiful or doesn’t fall into the "it’s OK to be overweight if you’re a gorgeous black diva" stereotype (which I hate. See: Hudson, Jennifer, for proof of divaship independent of size. And i say Diva as a good thing.). The rest of them (maybe not Artie) are STUNNING. Traditional, Hollywood glamour-ilke. Imagine you just walked in on this group. Sometimes we forget because the show forces the idea that they aren’t gorgeous creatures on us, that it is highly unlikely that 90% of these people would be considered losers at their school or that any glee club, especially one that seems to have loserdom and outcastness at its core, would have this high a quotient of traditional glamour. With all that in mind it makes the song ring a little hollow to me, and manipulative, because this was a song DESIGNED to sell to every damn kid in high school in the world who feels that way (read; all of them).

And though I really do like the song �� it’s fun, it’s catchy, it’s thematically accurate �� all that is totally, completely destroyed by the lyric, "I can only be who I are." ARE YOU JOKING? That is not okay. That is just lazy, lazy writing. Grammar is pliable but does not stretch THAT far.

As soon as I said it, a wave of hate and snark hit my @ replies, and it sparked some discussion on the concept of unjustified hate of pop culture and its deities. (It also prompted a joke about me writing ‘Bieber, A History,�� which prompted to make the that I’ve ever seen.)

When I checked my I had a rather demanding question on the subject (though I suspect it was just a friend being snarky and funny, but it hit a nerve! So, apologies to anonymous friend, it’s not you, it’s me). I found myself ranting about how people get pissy about pop culture, and since it’s an important topic to me I’ve copied it below.

(In other news I’ve integrated my formspring account here, so I’ll be better able to double-post answers to things I like here! Yay

If only I could get everywhere by train. As I settle into my journey home, and watch horror stories on the news, of people being molested in airports by frustratingly underpaid and undertrained employees, I wish the world were different.

I’m a major fan of Chord Overstreet in GLEE.

No, not his abs.

(OK, yes, his abs, but that is not what I’m writing about. Right now.)

Sam displayed a kind of sensitivity on the show this week we rarely get on GLEE for all its grandstanding on homophobia. I found myself touched by it. Even though Finn is mostly correct that there is a big difference between being opposed to Kurt being gay and opposed to Kurt’s unbelievable abrasiveness when he likes someone, he is still ruled by perceptions and not his own moral code. Sam’s shrugging off of all of the things that Finn is talking about in terms of perceived homosexuality was genuine and believable. Mind, he’s the one who first didn’t want to be in Glee because of how Finn gets talked about �� but that didn’t have to be because of the gay underpinnings of those talks, just the way they tag a person as uncool. It’s important to note that when this involved the feelings of another person, Sam was unwilling to save his reputation at cost to his word or someone else’s self worth. That’s touching in itself, but the casual way Chord Overstreet played it �� a literal shrug, not a second of doubt about it no matter how Finn was trying to sell him on selling out Kurt �� meant even more.

On Finn:

I get where he’s coming from, and he had some good points. But he goes on sometimes about wanting to be a leader, and sometimes being a leader means doing the unpopular thing, getting slushied for it, and working to change people’s perceptions. It’s NOT “let’s see what everyone else thinks and do that.�� I know that = high school, but if you want to be a leader, be one. You want to change how people think about something, change it. I don’t actually think this is a flaw of the show, I think it is one of its strengths: Finn is imperfect, while much better about homosexuality than his ridiculous roidhound football teammates. He’s not brilliant and navigating all these impossible high school political landscapes. Neither is Kurt. Neither is Sam. But of all the ones who end up being a real leader in the school, my bet is that Sam becomes one unwittingly. He seems to walk around with that impenetrable air, he seems to care less about the politics than one might expect now that he’s over his first flush of being scared of being in Glee club.

On the final song:

You know, I’ve been pretty hate-ey on Rachel and Kurt so far this season. But I loved, loved, loved that they connected over the classic �� (even if Rachel was stretching to even ACT like Barbra from the original in it, whatever, you know that character has been practicing that part of that song since she could say “Funny Girl��). For all the talk of Rachel doing nothing that wasn’t selfish here, finally, was something she did just to be good to a fellow person in need. And in a time when it’s been pretty terrible out there for gay teens, this lilting, hopeful song sung by two of the biggest divas of all time (and remade by GLEE’s biggest divas) added a little “it gets better�� nod to the show without being overt, preachy, or insufferable. Gorgeous touch.

“I know you’re lonely. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to have feelings in high school that you can’t act on for fear of being humiliated or ridiculed or worse. We’re going to win Nationals this year. You know how we’re going to do that, because we have you. [Kurt, with full belief: “That’s true.”] That’s twelve people who love you just for being exactly the way that you are. I know you’re lonely but you’re not alone.��

One little note about that performance, though �� Lea Michele is clearly trying very hard to be the new Barbra Streisand. Good for you honey. Shoot for the stars. But study that performance and then Barbra’s�� and note the big fat difference. Barbra’s is effortless, and technically flawless while being effortless. Lea Michele is amazing. But she is not Barbra.

And, hell, one more note on this: whatever Glee does to the vocals, isn’t it great that a whole new generation of people are being introduced to these fine performances, showtunes, fantastic melodies and music that the current radio trash can’t touch, through this show? Yes, I thought so

So far we know about (and, SPOILERS!):

“One of Us��

“I Want to Hold Your Hand��

“Only the Good Die Young��

“Papa Can You Hear Me��

“Losing My Religion�� (You can hear Cory Monteith doing massive injustice to this song .��)

None of these songs are bad. Some of them (R.E.M.) are epic. But GLEE often falls into a trap that makes them seem as though they chose their songfest by typing the theme of that week’s show into an iTunes search box. We need GOD songs! We need something with RELIGION in the title!

If GLEE was really “finding religion�� as the ads would have you believe, where are the actually contemporary religious tracks? Not that I’m such a fan of them or can pick them out of a dusty heap �� I can’t �� but isn’t it a little shortsighted to skip over this HUGE sect of the music industry featuring songs that might actually lend weight to theme and emotion rather than offer a thin-strand-at-best connection to religion? Losing My Religion is not about religion. Only the Good Die Young was probably chosen for that line about the confirmation.

That would be fine if they managed to reimagine the song enough visually that the words took on new meanings, that they weren’t just convenient karaoke numbers �� but that has never been the rule with GLEE and I am not sure it will be so this time, either.

The only real nod to religion I see here, and it’s tenuous, is One of Us (“What if  God was one of us / just a slob like one of us / just a stranger on the bus / trying to make his way home.��) Appropriately light on the heavy religio-drama and raising questions high school teens might find themselves conflicted over here�� at least it’s relevant.

So, I’m cautiously pessimistic that this episode will capture something with the music it performs rather than despite the music it performs. That’s not to say the episode can’t be awesome and moving through its script and acting but GLEE’s outright best nonmusical moments don’t come close to other shows�� middling ones. GLEE is at its best when music and plot rise together and meet �� when what they’re singing about is as important to the plot as the plot itself. This is starting to feel as though they really want to do a religious episode but don’t want to risk turning off an audience with actually religious songs.

We’ll see.

PS �� there had HOT DAMN better be a blowout Mercedes gospel number. It SEEMS like there will be in the promos. All bets are off if there isn’t. Jesus himself could appear in the episode and it will have been a failure.

Blasphemously yours.

Thoughts on Glee 2×02: “Britney/Brittany��.

One of my favorite things to do the day after watching an episode of a television series I really enjoy is to hit my favorite blogs and read what other people had to say about it. I’m going to start doing that here and there with this blog. I think GLEE is ripe for the opinionating. I love the show, but admit that it is sometimes written so poorly it makes me cringe. The characters are so out of control inconsistent it doesn’t sustain much actual interest in their welfare. They do things that are so wrong, in the interest of setting up a good musical number, that it at times feels flat-out lazy. I am mostly able to forgive this on GLEE, because the plot isn’t the only reason I watch it. I’ll forgive a contrived “theme�� episode here and there in service of an exhilarating and pretty episode �� witness the “Madonna�� episode, which barely advanced any sort of plot but made just enough sense to justify the musical numbers and also featured cheerleaders on stilts. I mean �� cheerleaders on stilts.

The cheerleaders on stilts in this episode were replaced by Brittany S. Pierce, a.k.a. Heather Morris, whose spacy, hazy characterization brings her character’s ditziness to new, hilarious levels each week (helped along by amazing zingers �� “Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?�� �� “People thought I went away but really I spent the summer lost in the sewers�� �� etc.). First of all, she was a dead ringer for Britney Spears in those getups. Second, you know you’re toned when a red leather jump suit is LOOSE on you. Third, abs. WTF were those ABS. Fourth �� best dancer I’ve seen on television in a long time (that wasn’t also on that show where they can really dance). Fifth �� we needed a fantasy scene to break Brittany out of the plastic-doll consciousness in which she usually exists and realize her full performing power.

But outside of Brittany’s featured scenes in this episode, it was remarkably bad. Contrived to levels that I didn’t even think were possible for Glee. Let’s list a few:

Rachel trying to make Finn choose football over her? Yeah right �� your’e going to honestly tell me our little attention whore wouldn’t for a MOMENT want her boyfriend back as an all-star football player?

Why has Kurt been such a bitchfest this season so far? He is the least likable person on the show right now. He’s walking a hard line, being out and proud, flamboyant �� that’s hard to sell on a major television network, why does he also have to be an ass right now? Don’t screw this up, guys! He was much more likable last season. It does look, however, like we’ll be a bit more sympathetic to Kurt next week. I sure hope his dad’s not really dead.

Brittany’s teeth being the worst ever would have been slightly more believable if she wasn’t spending her 24th episode flashing perfect-looking pearly-whites. Do they think we’re blind, or that anyone with such awful teeth �� and surely awful breath �� would have that aspect of their hygiene so long unnoticed by a cheerleading coach as likely to point out personal flaws as is Sue Sylvester?

“We kind of grew up with her�� �� what? These kids are 16, supposedly. They were 10 in 2004. They started dancing to her well after “Hit Me Baby, One More Time,�� was well off the charts and no longer emblematic of a sexually frustrated emo-ridden youth. Am I wrong? Anyone about 16 years old now feel like they grew up with Britney?

“Get up in my grill. Brits and I wants to get our anaethesia on�� �� what the hell kind of stupid ghetto-talk is that? Come on, Santana. You’re smarter about your bitchiness than that. (And when I say  “Santana�� I mean, “Come on, writers. What the hell.��)

Everything Finn and Rachel sans the way they looked at each other during the final montage. Their drama was so ridiculous in this ep I was totally turned off by it, and them. But the walk-across-the-school-hallway-and-take-her-hand thing at the end was suitably sweet and redeeming and perfect for a teen girl fantasy.

The homophobia from those two goofy football players is as subtle as a sledgehammer and I’m tired of it. I hope Chord turns out to be Kurt’s BF because I can see him having some actual believable conflict over it, not this roided-up hallway firework display.

Overall, a theme show that has to strain the bonds a bit to make the numbers fit, once in awhile, is fine. What’s NOT fine is ripping apart every characterization on an episode basis. These numbers are powerful and important when we care about the people we’re watching, and I stop doing that when I don’t know who the hell I’m watching each week.

Things I liked:

Carl is a nice guy. He could have totally been an ass. I can’t wait for him to sing and dance. He’s also SLIGHTLY creepy �� what was it with that roofies reference? Why does he have any idea? Hmm.

Coach Beiste in general continues to impress. Although, I will say, there’s something weird and possibly insulting and cruel about having a kid in a wheelchair on the football team (it is a very dangerous place for him, if he falls out of his chair in the presence of what, 80 stampeding boulder-like teens, and can’t move out of the way�� this is a bad plan) �� so I hope they address this in a later episode. Also what happened to Kurt? Did he give it up?

Everything about Brittany in this episode, even apart from the already mentioned dancing. Her increased ego as the episode went on was just delicious.

That Becky is consistently Sue’s little sidekick. One of the things the show does well (most of the time�� again, with the inconsistency) is treat people with disabilities, minorities, those usually prejudiced against, with compassion. Again…most of the time.

“Toxic�� slowed down and done a la Fosse. Most things done a la Fosse are a bit better, classier and sexier than they were before.

That the show recognized some of the downsides of Britney Spears �� not being a good role model, having to rein in her talent and not explode like a crazy sex grenade �� nice to have a little honesty when she’s lending her imprimatur to the show.

Lastly, GLEE is nothing without its awesome one-liners, so, here are my fav quotes:

“He discovered America.��

“C���Dz���.”���� Brittany on Christopher Cross, and Will’s bizarre response

“I have a bad feeling about this lesson.”���� Kurt

“How can you get caught between the moon and New York City? They’re like 100 miles apart.”���� Finn

“Thank you for understanding. It’s been a hard road.�� �� Brittany

“Yes. Let’s talk about Michael Bolton.�� �� LOL! Why would anyone ever willingly do that?

“This room looks like the one on that spaceship where I got probed.�� �� Brittany

“Please don’t pull all my teeth. When I smile I’ll look like an adult baby but with boobs.�� �� Brittany

“Oh-no-not-Britney�� �� guess who

“Hey dwarf, anyone ever tell you that you dress like one of the bait girls on ‘To Catch a Predator��? / “Also, I’m more talented than you.”��Santana and Brittany

“I would just like to say that from now on I demand every solo in Glee Club�� �� Brittany, followed by the hilarious shot of Rachel.

“I’m more talented than all of you, I see that clearly now. It’s Brittany. Bitch.�� �� Brittany.

“I look forward to the day the paparazzi provoke me, and I attack them.�� �� Rachel

“You see what I’m talking about? They’re personifying you!�� / “Objectifying.�� –��Rachel and Finn

“Becky, you’re on red-alert. If you see any awkward teenage furtage, you perform that citizen’s arrest we practiced.” �ē��Sue Sylvester

“OK, I’m pretty sure none of that happened.�� �� Will’s response to Sue Sylvester’s hilariously fictional account of the Lady Bird Johnson “tramp stamp�� incident

“I mean seriously. You wear more vests than the cast of Blossom.�� �� Sue in fine form

“Finn can fly?�� / ��Really?” ��� Brittany, and Kurt’s hilarious response

“Wait, I thought I was the only one getting the solos from now one Next week, I’m going to be performing a musical number by Ke$ha.�� �� Brittany, who totally owned this entire episode, obviously.