My life as sitcom

Last night, my neighbor introduced me to the sitcom the Big Bang Theory. For those like me who haven't watched television consistently since Murphy Brown, TBBT is about 4 male Caltech professors, two of whom live across the hall from a cute blonde aspiring actress. Many canonical nerd types are represented: high-strung asexual mathematician/theorist, neurotic oversexed Jews, quiet undersexed South Asians, borderline cool but still socially awkward types, and bitchy cold emasculating women (a side character). Leaving aside the last, which is offensive but makes me reflect whether I am anything like her, it's extremely entertaining to see academia in sitcom format.

Of course having watched the first episode with my neighbor, I went home and immediately watched another 9 episodes online through Chinese and Spanish pirate websites, sating my curiosity. Having seen so many in such a short time, the format is stuck in my head, in much the same way that I found myself thinking in Onegin stanzas after reading most of Eugene Onegin in one sitting.

So I have started thinking that my life fits well into sitcom format.

1. My neighbors introduce potentially interesting plot elements.
- The girl across the street is a cute lesbian friend-of-a-friend taking a break from a long-standing relationship.
- The neighbor who introduced me to TV lives just 50 feet away and I am constantly passing his door: he's 6 years younger, politically Conservative bordering on offensive, and seems to have a crush on me (he's very cute, and you can't beat the convenience; alas not marriageable).
- Two girls live down the block, and sometimes spending time with them feels like Good Cop, Bad Cop. The Good Cop is so fun, and some part of me really likes the Bad Cop (the other part wonders if she hates me). Minor characters.
- Newly irreligious 6 years younger cute aspiring writer of distinguished lineage whose parents still don't know, who sees me either as a potential friend or as potential sexual practice.
- A good-looking older guy across the neighborhood I know from grad school has photogenic weirdness such as speaking earnestly and openly about spirituality and illness. Regrettably I feel discomfort and have a constant urge to flee him. He's the one who made me take the morning off to drive him to get his wisdom teeth out, and then left email and voice messages for the next few days about dry socket.

2. My work includes both popular appeal and irony, and my advisor is good-humored and avuncular.

3. My personal life is a humorous mess:
- Hermit ex-boyfriend who (inexplicably and probably regrettably) I love, but it cannot be because he is so dedicated to his hermetic existence he is not sure he can share an apartment with a spouse, much less have kids. If he finds a spouse, she can live across the hall, but he also likes to joke about dying alone. I'm his major point of contact with the world, and advise him on his work. Which is also full of popular appeal and irony.
- Aforementioned 7 year guy and Alan are good foils: very smart and socially awkward elite PhD WASP who runs marathons vs. not so smart but emotionally attuned ethnic guy who was the only one to fall in the mud when we went hiking.

4. My past and elsewhere includes colorful characters:
- Relatives who had a sudden conversion to either fundamentalist Protestantism or did the Hansen's law ethnic thing.
- One ex was a cool hippie who spoke earnestly about which legumes are easiest for him to digest and how he could find out a lot about himself by putting sesame oil in his first urine of the morning and observing how it disperses. (We actually did this, and found it just stayed in a blob, which is not mentioned as a possible outcome.)
- A friend who has never dated anyone ever for no apparent reason, although now her perpetual singleness has just become self-perpetuating, but she has humorous self-deprecation to an art.
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And so on.