Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series) (3 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Crusie,Leah Wilson

Tags: #Humor & Entertainment, #Television, #History & Criticism

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Heck, I wouldn’t even mind knowing Taylor Doose. He might be an uptight pain in the patootie half the time, but you’ve got to hand it to him, he keeps things together in that town. Mussolini may have been a madman, but the trains always ran on time. Without Taylor, there’d be no movies in the town square, no Revolutionary War re-enactments, and no Festival of Living Art. Those things are half the fun of living in a small town where everybody knows your name. And your birthday. And what you had for dinner last night, who you had it with, and whether or not you’re sleeping together.
 
Of course, before I begin the slow dance of seduction for my one true heart, my soul mate, the cock of the walk, if you will, I’ll have to ingratiate myself to Babette and Miss Patty. Two old-school cronies dishing the dirt like the Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper of Stars Hollow, without the cat fight, of course. Plus, those two have been around the block, if you know what I mean.
 
I think I could learn a few lessons about
l’amour
from Miss Patty. Who can resist a chain-smoking former showgirl and serial divorcee teaching the town’s littlest blossoms the choreography to
Swan Lake
? She’ll tell it like it is. “Come on, girls! Love waits for no one,” I’ve heard her admonish her tiny ballerinas as they flit across the stage (“Hammers And Veils,” 2-2). And she should know. Married four times to three men. Even in grief, before Fran’s funeral, I heard her tell Lorelai, “It’s times like these that you realize what’s important in life. I’m so glad I had all that sex” (“Say Goodnight, Gracie,” 3-20). (Sheesh, if it weren’t for Miss Patty’s lascivious ways, you’d begin to think Lorelai’s constant bed-hopping was kind of slutty.)
 
Then there’s Babette Dell. The way she tells it, she hoed some tough rows before settling down with Morey. “It’s so hard being a woman,” she’s said. “You got your morals, standards, and your good common sense, then BAM you meet some guy and it all goes out the window” (“Help Wanted,” 2-20). (Hmmm, sound familiar, Rory?) You’ve heard the stories from Babette—once a guy pushed her out of a moving car and she even joined a cult for another man. Found herself wearing a muumuu and banging a tambourine in an airport. Not that it’s all that surprising. Babette is the one who lives with cats and garden gnomes for a family, in a house with big barn doors and tiny furniture.
 
Speaking of alternative living arrangements, some people may find it questionable that Kirk continues to live with his mother, but I think it’s nice. You don’t find that kind of filial piety outside of rural China anymore. Sure, there’s Lorelai and Rory shacking up together next door to Babette, but let’s admit it, they’re just a few years shy of crossing that line from cute, single mom and her adorable wunderkind to full-blown Big and Little Edie serenading the raccoons at old Grey Gardens.
 
Oh, alright, I’ll admit that Kirk may have his peculiarities, but on the whole he is steadfast and strong. Oh, I get prickly just thinking about him! What’s not to love about Kirk? The man is good and kind and decent. Remember Cat Kirk? Few people, not even Babette the consummate cat lover, would have stuck it out so long with such a feisty feline, but Human Kirk was willing to go to the mat for his misunderstood mouser. He’s also industrious and not afraid to take risks in his entrepreneurial pursuits. Lorelai and Sookie might have gone out on a limb to start the Dragonfly Inn, but that’s nothing compared to Kirk’s forays into Hay There lotion, topical headline T-shirts (Babette really did eat oatmeal!), retro bath mats, and one-of-a-kind hand-carved mailboxes (Condi Rice’s mouth has never been so useful).
 
Kirk’s the kind of guy who owns a town handbook, is not afraid to use a bullhorn to keep a buffet line moving, and takes the agreement between video store owner and video store customer seriously. Kirk might consider Taylor his mentor, but Taylor seems like a Merry Prankster flipping the bird at authority next to Kirk’s resolute adherence to the rules. Some people might say those traits make one strict or inflexible or perhaps despotic and tyrannical, but I call it integrity and respect for tradition. There’s nothing more seductive than a strong man who knows how to use his power. “Rumstud” might do it for some women, but Kirk’s my man.
 
Then there’s the softer side of Kirk. He’s good looking in a Cary Grant meets Foghorn Leghorn’s nemesis the baby chicken hawk sort of way. A creative genius who loves dance. When he blew out his knees from years of tap dancing he simply redirected his artistic energy into other pursuits. I’d say he was unparalleled as the director of Miss Patty’s one-woman-show “Buckle Up, I’m Patty,” even if the cast was a bit volatile. Then again, every Werner Herzog has his Klaus Kinski, and that tension simply makes better art. Kirk’s own acting aspirations have led him to such seminal roles as the Woman of Questionable Morals who saves Stars Hollow from British invasion; a very convincing Server at the Bracebridge Dinner (who only broke character to defend the memory of
I Love Lucy
after Lorelai persisted in baiting him); and let’s not forget the Giant Hot Dog who passed out flyers to promote lunch at the Dragonfly Inn (I know I was hungry just looking at him). Judging by his commitment to character when he played Christ in the staging of the Last Supper during the Festival of Living Art, I think it’s clear that his particular genius leans toward Stasbergian Method Acting à la Pacino and De Niro.
 
Despite his live performance accomplishments, his true artistic brilliance was showcased during his directorial debut at Movie in the Square Night.
A Film by Kirk
will surely go down as a Stars Hollow instant classic. Asaad Kelada eat your heart out, man! Kirk has mad talent.
 
And he’s loaded. Did I mention that? Luke Danes might consider himself the hardest working man in Stars Hollow, but slinging hash behind a lunch counter is nothing compared to 15,000 odd jobs over eleven years. Kirk’s work ethic coupled with stupendous feats of frugality (he’s a man who’ll haggle over the price of a used book at a charity event) plus the miracle of compound interest have left Kirk a wealthy man, indeed. I’m not after his money, though. I’d sign a prenup in a heartbeat if that would seal the deal for him. I’d even let him have a spider monkey.
 
Frankly, I’m surprised that there isn’t more competition for Kirk’s affection. (Lorelai had her chance, but she turned up her snub little nose at his entreaty for her love.) He’s obviously the most unique person to come out of Stars Hollow in a long time. Without his idiosyncrasies serving as the barometer of quirky in a small town full of oddballs, other people of Stars Hollow might start to seem a little strange, maybe even off-putting. But with Kirk around, no matter what other people do, they seem pretty normal.
 
The only problem I foresee in my romantic pursuit is how to woo a man with so much life experience. It’s not as if I can jump out of an airplane trailing a sign professing my love. Kirk’s already been a promotional parachutist, so my attempt would be mere parody. Whatever I do, it’ll have to be something original and distinctive, because Kirk is truly one-of-a-kind. As he once told Lorelai, “Whimsy goes with everything!” (“An Affair To Remember,” 4-6). I’m just hoping it’ll go with me.
 
Heather Swain
is the author of two novels,
Eliot’s Banana
and
Luscious Lemon
, and the editor of
Before: Short Stories About Pregnancy
. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals, Web sites, and magazines. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, two children, and dog.
 
 
Jennifer Armstrong
Boys Not Allowed
 
LUKE: Will you marry me?
 
LORELAI: What?
 
LUKE: Just looking for something to shut you up. (“Kiss and Tell,” 1-7)
 
 
 
Lorelai Gilmore had trouble staying engaged long enough to get married (the first smart thing Christopher did in the series was keep the engagement short) and Jennifer Armstrong knows why. If you have it all without saying, “I do,” isn’t it smarter to say, “I don’t”?
 
I
T WAS WHEN MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE took a jolting upswing that I started questioning whether I wanted to go through with the wedding I’d been planning to the longtime love of my life. And that’s no coincidence. I’d spent most of the decade that I’d been dating my fiancé pining for his proposal: I would write vows in my head, pick songs for our first dance—and because I am, at heart, an overachiever, I plowed through the wedding plans with determination once he finally popped the question.
 
Then I landed my dream job at
Entertainment Weekly
magazine—and, worse, I started to find my groove there, landed cover story assignments, got promoted. Worse still, I began making friends in the media and literary world of New York City, which put me in regular company with powerful editors and agents and authors who seemed to take my writing ambitions seriously. It occurred to me that I could do even more than be a staff writer at a national magazine. It occurred to me that I could be exactly the kind of person I’d barely dared to dream I could be—the kind of person who would’ve both fascinated and terrified the girl I was back in college. The girl I was when I met my fiancé. The girl I had absolutely no interest in even remembering anymore, much less being.
 
So I postponed the wedding I’d wanted for my entire adult life. And, eventually, I canceled it.
 
Since then, I have watched (on the television in my very writerly East Village studio that symbolizes my hard-won independence, natch) with particularly rapt attention as one Lorelai Gilmore first put off naming a wedding date when she got engaged to her presumed soul-mate, Luke Danes . . . and then used her stunning organizational proficiency to plan the perfect wedding in record time . . . and then let him postpone it when things got complicated between them . . . and then called the whole thing off. Granted, she bolted because she was tired of waiting around for him to straighten out his relationship with the long-lost daughter who had recently resurfaced. But this wasn’t the first time she’d reneged on an engagement—she literally skipped town on a previous wedding. And, heck, she couldn’t even fully commit to Christopher
after
she’d impulsively married him on their trip to France.
 
I thought that if I examined her fictional wishy-washing closely enough, I might gain some real insight into my own waffling. I have, after all, always related to her stubbornness, her
joie de vivre
, and her passion for junk food. At least those first two traits ought to translate into a certain ability to make relationships work—to stick to them and to make the best of them, no matter what.
 
And yet both of us have become synonymous—her to
Gilmore Girls
fans, me to my own circle of friends—with the very twenty-first century phenomenon of female cold feet.
 
I’ve now realized it wasn’t those aforementioned traits, but some other shared qualities that prompted both Lorelai and me to shiver in our stilettos: namely, that we’re successful business women (she runs an inn with her best friend; aside from my day job, I run a Web site with my best friend) without biological clocks (she’s got her kid; I’ve no interest in one). She lives in the feminist “wishful-thinking world,” as the
Village Voice
called it, dreamed up by creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, where single moms raise brilliant daughters and men are nothing more than trifling distractions. I live in a post-feminist world that kicked in after the advent of
Gilmore Girls
, a place where Maureen Dowd asks
Are Men Necessary?
and we answer, “Not really.” Modern girls may not talk as fast as the Gilmore Girls or engage in witty repartee with colorful townsfolk, but as far as female empowerment goes, we’re catching up fast.
 
Yes, behind the pop culture references and the picturesque setting lurks a militant girls-rule ideology rivaled only by the likes of
Thelma & Louise
. Ally McBeal and Murphy Brown struck blows for strong-yet-neurotic single moms,
Sex and the City
single-handedly advanced female sexuality by about eight decades, and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and
Alias
gave us women who kicked ass quite literally. But
Gilmore Girls
is the one show that depicts the place Thelma and Louise would’ve gladly driven off a cliff to get to.
 
And women like me are transforming from must-snag-a-man drones into fully realized Lorelais (and Rorys).
 
To wit: Colleges now are brimming with overachieving little Rory Gilmores, as women now outnumber
and
outperform their male counterparts. The
Gilmore
world, however, exaggerates the gap to the extreme; in Stars Hollow, men lag to an astonishing extent. Rory’s on-again, off-again flame Logan comes off as whip smart (their snappy banter gives them a crackling chemistry she never could’ve dreamed of with ex Dean)—but he prefers to rest on his wealth. “So that’s what hard work feels like,” he cracked after helping Rory with a school newspaper emergency. “Apparently I’ve been avoiding it for a reason” (“Friday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” 6-13).

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