100!
So apparently, this is my 100th post. And of course, I'm not going to write anything substantive. Yesterday, I started to post about why
Veronica Mars
is so great and my reactions to the season premiere Wednesday night, but I quickly realized that was going to take more time than I had during my quick little lunch break, so then I thought I'd do a run down of my thoughts of the season/series premieres, but then I realized I was behind on those, so that's not going to happen for a few days.
Instead, I'll just say thanks for coming, reading, and providing talkback. Feel free for more. If I have a sense of what folks are responding to, I'll try and do more of that. Right now, since we're in the throes of a new TV season, my thought is to really make this more of a rant on programs--serve as kind of a watercooler thing. Though this isn't the format, sort of a more elaborate form of:
Alias
--It may have jumped the shark one or two seasons ago, but killing of Vaughan got me verklempt and could give the program a whole new creative thrust.
Everwood
--I wasn't as moved by this as a lot of people, though I did think it was good. That might have something to do with the fact that I watched it at 1:30 a.m. after getting home from Act Two. And I'm not convinced Bright's new roommate is gay.
So again, thanks--and let me know what you think!
OOC
I'm beginning to fear that my writing is going to let my neuroses and paranoia get out of control. I'm sitting here in fear at the moment, just waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding something that's just completely not a big deal, but I can't reconcile logic with my emotions. ARGH!
Love or Hate
Do I love or hate Ikea after spending the weekend putting the stuff together? I don't know? But I spent waaay too much time at the store this weekend.
Typical encounter
I get my number. It's so long that it'll be years before I'm called. I can just fill it. I'm sure I looked stupid sprinting through the doors, passing people who were slowly approaching the blue pole where they could take a number. I knew what I was in for. I wanted to be ahead of them in line. Amateurs. Don't know nothing.
Then I sit beside a woman who was returning something. After a few minutes I was about to lean over and ask her how long she's been waiting. Then I take a look at her and realize that she's clutching a pillow made in the shape of a heart with arms coming out of it. She's holding this thing so tightly that I think her own heart might stop from all the pressure put on it. (I guess IKEA pillows really are soft.) I decided to ignore her.
After I'd been rebuffed by several underage teenage girls, they call my number! WAHOO! I bounce up to the counter because I'm about to get outta here! I'm sure the people behind the counter were thinking, "Amateur."
I show her the piece of my bookcase that was broken when I opened it up. The girl looked in the back and couldn't find one, so she had to pull it from the floor. She asked me to wait and she'd bring it to me. And you know what? I did. As soon as I moved away from the counter, I felt like I'd been stamped with a big sign on my face reading "AMATEUR HERE!" I should've stood there and waited, but I'd just been to church and I thought I'd try and be kind and gracious. Stupid mistake. I should've started preaching and threatening hellfire and brimstone down on the people who were making me wait so long.
After a while I got bored and I kicked some three year old out of the playhouse they had put in room for kids to play in while their parents. I pointed the kid to the woman with the heart pillow and told her to steal it from the lady as soon as the men in the white coats finished strapping her to the gurney? She asked how she'd know they were done. I told her to wait until they pulled the sheet over the woman's face. Then they'd be done.
Eventually, the child grew up enough to start kindergarten. I knew that meant I needed to get out of the playhouse or my knees would give way. So I found somebody who was returning a mattress and thought I'd test it out-just to see if there really was a reason for them to be returning it or if they were sado-masochists and just forgot to get the leather bound mattress with whips and chains included.
Finally, the customer service representative brings me over the piece I needed for my bookcase. By this time, I'd already forgotten why I was there. I just assumed I'd been homeless for so long that in some weird twist of events, this ended up being my real new home. It wasn't a funny thought.
But I got home and finished putting the bookcase together. It looked so happy, I almost couldn't fault its maker anymore.
Almost.
Brilliance Found!
If I ever wrote a teaser as brilliant as the one for
Lost’s premiere last night, I would not have to worry about finding an agent. They’d be banging down my door begging me to let them represent me. Sigh.
Seriously, was there a better way to kick off the season after your first Emmy win than that couple of minutes? NO! I kept thinking that it was a flashback to Locke as a young man until we got that crazy swooping shot.
Just so cool. . (And very nice to see Anson Mount back on TV after licking his wounds after
The Mountain.)
Overall, I couldn’t tell if I thought the episode was great or if I just missed it that much. I felt it was slightly better than the season premiere of
Arrested Development that I got around to watching last night, but only because the story was a little stronger.
I’m not sure that’s the back story I would’ve gone with though. We already knew a lot of it, and it was good to flesh it out and tell us new stuff about the way it played out with Jack meeting her and all, but there have been more riveting backstories. (Though wasn’t it obvious when Damien showed up in the stadium we’d see him again?)
And I’m also intrigued by the decision not to show the fate of Sawyer and company on the raft. I don’t know why that is, but I’m sure we’ll see them next week. Or at least that’s what the previews indicate.
One quick question though. Was that really Julie Bowen playing Sarah again? It looked to me like they recast. Our cable still isn’t hooked up, so we were watching on an antenna, which wasn’t the best thing to do.
Stretching Credibility
Credibility has never been
Nip/Tuck
's strength. (Check out the whole Matt sleeping with a transgenedered individual after he she slept with her adopted son who tried to seduce Matt if you need examples.) Nevertheless, it's always been a lot of fun.
But two things last night just took the main characters so far afield, that I don't think they can ever get back. Julia and Sean can't make up their minds as to whether they want to be married or divorced. Cool, but seriously, if you raised two children together, don't you think you would know one another enough to be able to tell when the other person isn't completely sold on something. And wouldn't you be able to communicate about stuff? Clearly, not written by someone who's been married for a while.
But the biggest problem--Christian gets raped and by the end of the episode is engaging in a three-way? I've done a LOT of research on victims of male rape. Never once have I ever seen someone get over their trauma by having sex with two women. I mean--PLEASE! It stretches the limits of suspension of disbelief so far offstream that it's insulting. Maybe the program will actually deal with the reprecussions of this, because it's a HUGE storyline with more dramatic possibilities than you can imagine. But there's no hint of it being in last night's ep. So who knows?
EGADS
I've been in my new apartment less than a week and I've already gotten a parking ticket.
This is not a good sign.
Whatta You Know?
Hey! It’s actually raining in L.A. this morning! Only the second time I’ve seen it do that since spring. I’m curious to see what morning rush hour will look like. Maybe it will be slow and give me some more time to think about the number of ways I was impressed with
Proof. (I’ll blog more about that later.)
NBC Doldrums
Which show will be the first to get cancelled this season?
I don't know, but I bet it will be on NBC. I saw most of the network's pilots over the weekend and let me say, there's nothing worth talking about.
How do you expect to get out of last place with that crap on the air?
And where is
Scrubs
?
Quick Emmy Thoughts
Boring, boring, boring….
The show was dull, the choices for presenters uninspired, and the drivel was more drivilish (if there were such a word) than usual.
But at least some new shows were honored.
All of the drama winners—Lost, Boston Legal, Huff, Medium, and House were new shows. Sure Spader and Shatner won last year for playing these same characters, but still, they were new shows.
It was also great to see Felicity Huffman win because she should already have at least one Emmy on her shelf for Sports Night, so we’ll take things as they come. And JJ Abrams finally got an Emmy. Overall, there were a lot of good things that happened last night.
Still, there were some head scratchers. The fact that Brad Garrett won over Peter Boyle and Jeremy Piven—huh? He’s good, don’t get me wrong. I just wouldn’t have thunk it. It’s kind of like Michael Richards always winning the Emmy for Seinfeld and Jason Alexander never winning one.
The Emmy Idol wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I wonder if that’s the first time Donald Trump ever won something for his singing. Still, love me some Kristen Bell… Sigh!
Bring on some new shows!
Even More Wahooing!
From Zap2It:Joss Whedon, the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Angel creator who gushed online about UPN's
Veronica Mars this summer, has been rewarded with a guest spot on the show. The network says he'll play a rental-car manager who has a scene with Veronica (Kristen Bell) in this season's sixth episode.
The cameo came about after Whedon effusively praised "Veronica Mars" on the Buffyverse-centric web site
Whedonesque.com. Posting to the site's (which is independently run) boards last month, Whedon wrote:
"My peeps and I just finished a crazed Veronica Marsathon, and I can no longer restrain myself. Best. Show. Ever. Seriously, I've never gotten more wrapped up in a show I wasn't making, and maybe even more than those. Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion, I mean BIG, and charismatic actors and I was just DYING from the mystery and the relationships and PAIN" (caps all his). "... These guys know what they're doing on a level that intimidates me. It's the Harry Potter of shows."
"Veronica Mars" creator Rob Thomas, whose show has often been compared to "Buffy," returned the praise on his
own site, and also dropped the news that Whedon would make a guest appearance, which UPN has confirmed. The "Serenity" writer-director has popped up before on his shows "Angel" and "Firefly," but he's never appeared on someone else's.
Whedon is the second cult auteur booked for a guest spot on "Mars" this season. "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" director Kevin Smith, a friend of "Mars" producer Dan Etheridge, will play a convenience-store clerk in the show's second episode.
"Veronica Mars" begins its second season on UPN Wednesday, Sept. 28.
Three Reasons to Celebrate
WAHOO!
Proof
opens today in LA! And who knows when I'm going to get to see it!
WAHOO!
I have a friend coming in from out of town. Actually, he's already here. Called me from the airport last night. Just haven't seen him yet.
WAHOO!
I got the keys to my new place last night! I slept in MY own room for the first time since February!
My Fall Preview
There isn’t a whole lot that I’m looking forward to this fall—at least in terms of new television series.
Reunion sounds like the most interesting concept, but the reviews are so horrible that I’m almost afraid to check it out. (I missed the pilot last week and it’s pre-empted Thursday for the President’s apology to screwing up Katrina. Even the apology is late.) I’ve always enjoyed
Chris O’Donnell, so I’ll at least tune in to
Head Cases if for no other reason than to see him on network TV before the show gets cancelled.
Commander-in-Chief could be interesting, but after
Deterrence and
The Contender, I don’t have a lot of hope in political stuff coming from
Rod Lurie (though
Line of Fire was pretty good), so who knows. I still can’t figure out what the difference is between
Threshold, Invasion, and
Surface. I’ll probably try
Invasion a couple of times since it’s on after
Lost, but whatever.
It’s actually the sitcoms this year that kind of have me excited. Out of everything, I’m most eagerly awaiting
How I Met Your Mother. I know that everybody is clamoring for
Everybody Hates Chris (and I’m eager for that too), but I’m also excited about the possibility of seeing
Alyson Hanigan and
Neil Patrick Harris back on television on a regular basis. They’re great actors who deserve success.
Chris, is of course what everybody involved with TV is buzzing about. Hopefully it’s good and it will keep up the quality all year. Beyond that—
Kitchen Confidential could be interesting. It has a great cast in
Bradley Cooper,
Nicholas Brendon, and
Bonnie Somerville. But it’s also
Darren Star who’s never met a tawdry story he didn’t want to wade through.
Nevertheless, here are the eleven premieres/season premieres I’m the most looking forward to:
- Veronica Mars
- Lost
- Arrested Development
- Gilmore Girls (I’m a little behind I know)
- 24 (I know it’s not till January, but still…)
- Alias
- Desperate Housewives
- How I Met Your Mother
- Everybody Hates Chris
- Everwood
- Nip/Tuck (I know, I know, I know…)
Late Weekend Wrapup
Why is it impossible to have be pleased and content?
I don’t know the answer to that, but as I sit here thinking about what I got done this weekend, I don’t feel very excited about my accomplishments for the weekend. However, here’s a list of what I did this weekend:
- Went on a retreat to start Act Two
- Visited Santa Barbara for the first time
- Came up with a brand new story for my spec script
- Laid out a decent of my quarterly outline for when I start teaching our Sunday School class next month
- Made new friends
- Fortified relationships with select Act One faculty (I’m really excited about this one)
- Watched episodes of Veronica Mars
I’m not even sure what else I would’ve liked to have gotten done, but I still don’t feel like I was 100% productive this weekend.
Does that mean that I’m just programmed not to be content with progress or maybe is it simply that I’m only pleased when I get major accomplishments marked off on my mental “to do” list. Who knows? I sure don’t, but I don’t have any more time to think about it. I’ve got to do some research on cyberstalking.
Back to Zero
There’s nothing like spending two weeks working on something to have it completely invalidated.
That is what has been the most difficult thing in this whole writing process by far. It’s not the validation I crave. I know there are a lot of people who need validation to affirm that they are breathing properly. I’ve known them and they’re not necessarily the easiest person to be around. And I’m constantly aware that I don’t want to become that guy.
Instead, I think the frustration comes from the fact that I know if my story ideas are so wrong—then I’m still far away from being where I want to be ultimately. It’s hard to just sit back and be patient and let something cultivate—particularly when I feel like I’m working against a clock.
I guess that’s just the joy of what I’m doing.
Well, no time to blog. Gotta go start over on story ideas.
12 Days Till PROOF
This is a great dilemma. I have a potential guest coming into town the weekend
Proof opens, AND the
Emmy Awards are on that weekend. And I have to watch those if for no other reason than to look for my friend Becca in the audience! Talk about a conflict of ideals and priorities! SHEESH! Who knew Los Angeles would be this hard?
Going on Two Months
Since I've had no place to live, I haven't had a television in almost two months now. Technically, I do own a television, but it's in storage with most of my other stuff, so I guess the appropriate phrase is that I haven't been able to watch television for over two months.
And I feel like I'm going crazy.
I really have no idea what's going on with Hurricane Katrina. I just know it's bad.
I haven't seen
Prison Break
or
Rome
. (This one is particularly bad.
I didn't know that a television station in Memphis is accusing
Craig Brewer of allowing thousands of people to die. (Don't worry--it's not true. I got the inside scoop on that one.)
My eyeballs have never been so bored in their lives. They think they've done something wrong. They think they're back in the eighth grade and that I've gotten three Bs on my report card. They are fearful that Mrs. McFadden is going to show up at any moment carrying that enormous yard stick around asking what the chemical symbol for magnesium is. (I think it's Me, but in no way shape or form would I want to bet on that.)
I'm sure that part of the reason that gas is as expensive as it is now is that I haven't been watching television, which causes a lot less advertising viewership, which means less avenue dollars, which just results in the entire economy being screwed up, which in turn means higher gas prices. Is this a self-centered argument? You could argue that, but if you lived over 2000 years ago and somebody came up to you and said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" wouldn't you wonder if somebody needed an ego check? (Is that blasphemous to say? Am I going to keel over right now? I hope not.) Either way, the apparent ego involved in both statements doesn't make them any less true.
I watch that much television. Maybe that's why I've been so stressed the last couple of months. I haven't had my natural decompressor. (The whole fact that I've been paying attention to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and worrying about shelter might be a factor too, but I don't really want to dwell on that for the moment.) I'm just so looking forward to getting a place to live just so I can have my TV back up and functioning. Sure, I miss my bed, having a dresser to put clothes in, but it's the lack of television that is making my soul shrink every day.
Not too much longer until I'm reunited.
And we wonder why I'm not dating....
Little Less Homeless
I still don't have a place to live--but it's coming. Signed a lease today. Also met my new roommate for the first time after talking to him many, many times over the last couple of months. Seems like a cool guy. Used to work in
Macedonia as a missionary for
Crusade.
Now we just have to find out date we move in. (We think we know that, but we get a confirmation next week.)
And remember, if you haven't seen
The Constant Gardener yet, go see it at least once before I get around to seeing it the second time. It's worlds better than
Broken Flowers.
Total Selfishness
There are definitely rules of common courtesy regarding a lot of urban practices.
When riding escalators, stay on the right hand side to let those of us who are moving pass on the left.
Don't pause too let to let obnoxious tourists take photos without anyone in them. (You'll ultimately back up traffic.)
Here's a new one--
Don't unplug somebody's laptop just because you need outlet power too.
I was working at a
coffee shop this afternoon, and suddenly, my battery tells me that it's getting low. For a second, I thought the thing was on crack because I had the laptop plugged in. I look again, and my battery light isn't on. Hmmm... this doesn't make any sense. I start playing with the power cord inn the back, fiddling with the battery adapater and realize, the thing is getting no power. Then I look down and realize that the outlet I plugged my cord into is not the outlet I'm currently plugged into. That outlet doesn't work.
Apparently, when I went to the coffee bar to pick up my drink, the guy sitting in front of me decided to plug his laptop into the same outlet. In doing so, he unplugged mine, put his plug into the outlet that had power and then unplugged mine, putting it into the dead outlet. And of course, all, without saying anything.
You don't need to cry for me. (Though feel free to
send flowers if you want). Just make sure you don't become a plug tyrant.
Constant Beauty
Go see
The Constant Gardener.
I've tried for almost twelve hours to come up with a clever way to talk about why this is the best movie of the year so far, but I just can't do it other than to come out and talk about how great the thing is.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a fresh score of 86%, but I really think this should be in the 90s. It's epic in scope, intimate in story telling, beautifully drawn and it finally made me think
Rachel Weisz is worth paying attention to.
The film is really about a love story and the weight of your spouse's work and what that means to you--even when you're not involved. It questions how much of someone lives on in their work, how much their work is their legacy and what that means to the world at large--no matter what they are doing.
Additionally, the film touches on a lot of other stuff--AIDS in Africa, pharmaceutical corruption, diplomacy, the ineffectivity of the UN, passion, compatibility in love, human rights, etc. It's almost breathtaking everything that goes on in the film.
And
Fernando Merielles shows that
City of God wasn't a fluke. Even though this film is less frantic than his previous masterpiece, he approaches it with the same intensity that helps raise the film up to a level of greatness that no other film this year has even come close to approaching. The other brilliant directorial flourish Merielles uses is sound. Unlike most major films released this summer,
Gardener
understands the impact of breathing room. The director doesn't rush anything or overburden you with aural stimulation. As a result, there are a couple of scenes early on in the film that are simply devastating--primarily because of their lack of sound. Most other directors would have telegraphed the moment, but Merielles is too good for that. And that's what makes the film stand above every other fiction film this year.
See it.
Did You Say "Rabbit"?
It's the first of the month. Did you say "rabbit" first thing this morning? Or the first thing that came out of your month for September?
I DID!
Apparently, there is an old wives' tale that says if "rabbit" is the first word out of your mouth on the first of a new month, then you will have financial prosperity for that month.
This is something I learned in my tenth grade English class. I really don't know where it came from, why the teacher told it to us, how the story originated, or anything like that, but it doesn't stop me from saying it every month if I can remember.
And does it work? I'll let you figure that one out for yourself, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt.
