Short Bulletpoint Thingama--Oh forget it. Does anyone else remember when I used to be able to come up with clever blog titles?

Because I have so much to say and so little desire to say it.

• So the premiere of Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip has come and gone. And I was pleasantly pleased. Not blown away (though the Matthew Perry/Bradley Whitford scenes came awful close), but I enjoyed it all the same. Sorkin's dialogue sparkled, and Tommy Schlamme's direction was like the welcome return of an old friend. But: 45-minute pilots that have to introduce some 7 or 8 main characters are going to be a bit clunky. Remember that in The West Wing's pilot, President Bartlett was barely introduced -- he only had a short scene near the end of the episode -- which allowed Sorkin to focus exclusively on his other five stars. Once the characters of Studio 60 are established (which they mostly have been), I expect the show to start humming along. That being said....
  
• News is the series premiere of Studio 60 was overcome in the rating-wars by the season premiere of CSI:Miami. Surprisingly, Studio 60 actually lost ground as the hour went on, as a sizable amount of viewers tuned elsewhere for their entertainmennt during the second half of the show. That Studio 60 lost to CSI:Miami doesn't surprise me much. The show targets an audience that probably doesn't watch CSI:Miami in the first place, so it's a good program to square off against (though NBC likely wouldn't mind if they could steal away some of CSI:Miami's current audience, no doubt). That Studio 60 lost ground is a bit alarming, but when you consider it, the drop makes sense. Studio 60's lead-in was the wildly (at least for another couple of months) popular Deal or No Deal -- a two hour edition no less. While it may be a ratings grabber, it's definitely not a good thematic or genre lead-in. After two hours of watching people open briefcases and make funny faces, it's no wonder Studio 60 couldn't keep that audience. It's everything Deal isn't -- smart, fast-paced and irresistibly charming. In fact, the Judd Hirsch speech that opened Studio 60 railed against the very same television that Deal or No Deal represents. And while I've no personal problem with dumb entertainment (hello, Johnny Knoxville), it's only the fault of NBC's programming execs that Studio 60 wasn't able to hold its lead's audience.
• Speaking of stupid entertainment, and stupidity in general, there's an interesting piece in last week's Time Magazine (Sep 18th cover date) about Mike Judge's new film, Idiocracy. Judge, who you might know as the creator of Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill, and everyone's favorite cubicle-comedy Office Space, has been hard at work on Idiocracy for over two years now (it's been in the can for months), and with Luke Wilson starring, you'd think you would have seen a trailer for it by now. But nothing. No press, no marketing campaign, no trailer on Quicktime's website for us movie geeks, no nothing. Idiocracy tells the story of a normal guy from our present (Wilson) who is frozen and thawed out in the year 2505, and finds himself in a strange future where he's the smartest person alive. Judge's vision of the future is alot like our present, only a hell of a lot worse. Corporations and advertising have dumbed down culture so far that everyone is an idiot, and everything around them is gaudily uniform. (My favorite quote from the article describes a scene where "Costco takes up miles of space and has greeters emotionlessly repeat, 'Welcome to Costco. I love you.'") Time cites the failure of Fox's marketing division to create a trailer that test groups reacted positively to for Fox's decision to limit the movie's release to just seven cities. Let's hope that Fox's creative failure to find a way to market the film doesn't hurt its chances to get a proper DVD treatement. Most likely, Idiocracy will play like another Office Space by slowly building a cult audience then exploding to the point where Comedy Central and TBS are engaged in a blood feud for the television rights. Anything to replace their repeated airings of Malibu's Most Wanted, please!
  
• New Topic: Rupert Murdoch wants your money, evangelical America! In addition to their lack of trailer cutting skills, Fox now has a Christian film marketing arm, aptly named FoxFaith. Fox plans to release small-budget Christians films on DVD while specifically marketing them to Christian audiences with the help of churches like yours. Additionally, FoxFaith will market a select few films each year for theatrical release as well. Fox does not have any plans to produce big-budget Passion of the Christ epics however: their first film will an adaptation of Christian romance novelist Janette Oke's Love's Abiding Joy. For those of you not familiar with with the Christian romance scene, it's a lot like Harlequin novels, except the sex scenes are replaced with more wholesome conversion experiences. Can I get an amen?
• And finally, while none of you will care, Joss Whedon is taking over the plotting/scripting duties for Marvel Comic's Runaways beginning with issue #25. I'm not even sure if I care, save for the fact that the book was created by Brian K. Vaughan (of Y: The Last Man fame), and that Whedon is TV geek royalty. Runaways has always sounded like a fun read, and maybe someday, if I can get past the fact that it's not published before the 1990s, I'll check it out.

That's it Goodmen and Goodwomen. Maybe next time I'll write about things that matter, like that long awaited post about my jury duty. Most likely, it'll just be about Lost withdrawal.

P.S. Jake, can you remember to get my copy of Lost Season One from that one guy whose name I can't remember? I think it's safe to say that he's had a chance to view all 22 episodes considering how he's had it for about a year now. Thanks, chief.

Mark Kozelek Sings Anything Other Than Modest Mouse

In light of the "12 most important bands" debate going on at Andy Sikora's blog & Midwest Mindset, I had a thought about music in general yesterday that might bring peace and joy to all mankind and volcanoes, too.

I was reading this one part in High Fidelity where Marie LaSalle plays a short set in Rob's record shop, and mixes in a bunch of cover songs from artists Rob sells, and this is what flashed in my brain: All bands/artists ought to devote around half their sets to cover songs. Because all bands have influences, (and of the ones I'd like to see) I wouldn't mind hearing them sing and perform some of those influences. And of the ones I'd rather not see, maybe they'd be so embarrassed that the reason they first picked up a guitar was because of Hootie and the Blowfish, that they'd actually start seeking out more carefully crafted songs to cover, and actually become more talented songwriters because of it.

There are some genres, like country or jazz, that just lend themselves to covers -- and it's never thought to be hackneyed or derivative in the least. In fact, jazz artists never even play covers, they perform standards. Something by Ella Fitzgerald or Miles Davis or Duke Ellington. And everybody goes nuts over it.

But maybe rock bands can't do that. Maybe they're so used to trying to find their own sound (or trying to sound exactly like band-X) that to cover too many songs would be detrimental to everything they stand for (or expose them for the charlatans they are). I don't know. But I do know we'd be better off as a listening public if the artists we enjoy would play more things by the artists they enjoy.

Besides, we could all stand to hear more new music, especially if it's new music that we might not have ever heard otherwise.

The thing about Steve Irwin...

....Is that he was both an entertainer and an educator. Anyone who watched one of his programs for more than five minutes would have realized how passionate Irwin was about animals and wildlife conservation. He made it his life to bring wild nature, in all her terrifying glory, into the homes of everyday people. Many of the animals he observed and wrangled with were either endangered, or are in-danger of having their habitats exploited and destroyed. With all the shit we have to put up with these days, from Nancy Grace to election spots every four seconds, it's no wonder most people don't give a damn about conservationism.

Irwin was an entertainer, no two ways about it. But he was also able to educate those same viewers who tuned in for his crazy stunts. Not too many entertainers can actually claim to be teachers as well. It takes a special kind of filmmaker, a special kind of musician, a special kind of personality, to pull that off. Irwin wasn't stupid. He knew the risks involved in his line of work. But for his own reasons, he felt that it was the right thing to do. If he could get people interested in the wild kingdom, or involved in protecting open spaces for wildlife to thrive and survive, then all those close calls were worth it. You wouldn't tell Salman Rushdie he took unnecessary risks for writing The Satanic Verses. And you wouldn't tell Johnny Cash he took unnecessary risks for protesting the Vietnam war. They believed in these things -- risks be damned.

And it's about time we recognized Steve Irwin for that as well. We should be so lucky to get just one man, so passionate about all God's creatures (great and small), in our lifetime. It wasn't his fault that most Westerners refuse to take note of wildlife unless it's in their faces. He gave the people what they wanted, and in turn, helped bring a voice to creatures who couldn't speak. Just remember, if we hadn't been so insistent on a mini-mall in every backyard and millions of open acres for cheap beef, then we wouldn't have needed someone like Steve Irwin to warn us about endangered habitats and their animalia residentialis.

Luckily, he had the courage to shake off the dust of indifference in our already over-stimulated minds.

And I say, good for him.

All Your Wilberforce Are Belong To Philip Anschutz

"It's like Amistad, but with lots more religion."

Bring on the 18-century political intrigue, my friends! An American film distributor has purchased the rights to a film based on the life and work of British abolitionist William Wilberforce, titled Amazing Grace, which was financially backed and produced by Walden Media, the same production company that brought us Holes, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the upcoming How To Eat Fried Worms. Walden Media, owned by Christian billionaire Philip Anschutz, has promised to launch an educational/marketing program dealing with slavery in today's world and social steps people can take to combat it.

In an interesting Walden Media twist, what might make the film appealing for evangelical Christians is the fact that William Wilberforce was an evangelical Methodist and a friend of John Newton (where we the get the title, "Amazing Grace", I'd presume). Wilberforce worked for much of his life as a member of British parliament in opposition to the Empire's slave trade. While not an outright abolitionist in the sense that he wanted to see every slave freed, he did fight for an end to the gross inhumanities perpetuated by the global slave trade. With the evangelical angle, Wilberforce's story seems an easy fit for targeting a Christian audience (evangelical or otherwise).

But what's really piqued my interest are the players involved in the production of the film. While Anschutz's Walden Media can boast a fine pedigree for getting evangelical butts in the seats for The Chronicles of Narnia, Amazing Grace may be an entirely different film altogether. Handling the scripting chores is Steven Knight, who received an Oscar nomination for his work on Dirty Pretty Things, while director Michael Apted (The World Is Not Enough, Nell, HBO's Rome) oversaw things from behind the camera. If not for the inclusion of Walden Media, I would assume the pic to have an R or PG-13 rating based on the creators involved. While an R rating for a story based on the crucifixion of Christ might not hurt a movie's chances for reaching evangelicals, it could turn that same audience away from a historical film dealing with British politics.

But the plot thickens a bit when you add to the fact that Chuck Colson (conservative Christian founder of Prison Fellowship and BreakPoint ministries) has an evangelical think tank named in honor of Wilberforce, the Wilberforce Forum, whose mission is to "help Christians approach life with a biblical worldview so that they can in turn shape culture from a biblical perspective." Said think tank deals with issues such as the Federal Marriage Amendment, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, creationism and global human rights. While I might not line up politically with Colson, I harbor the man no ill will, mostly due to his fantastically readable autobiography Born Again, and also due to the fact that he was the first evangelical leader to come out in support of the Harry Potter series of books. That being said, getting Colson behind Amazing Grace would be a gigantic first step in marketing the film to conservative Christians, which is why having an owner like Philip Anschutz behind Walden Media will be an important piece to that puzzle.

No matter who the film is marketed to, and no matter what rating it's given, I'm looking forward to what ought to be a fairly engrossing film. Wilberforce -- coming from a wealthy family, converting to Methodism at an early age, and spending such a large part of his life in opposition to a lucrative business for English slave traders and the British crown -- is an interesting character, and if the pic is done well, worthy of a good two hours. Let's just hope that in an effort to appeal to the broadest possible audience (young children included), Walden Media doesn't feel the need to sanitize certain events in order to maximize its profits. Wilberforce was a flawed individual who fought for a righteous cause during a very ugly time. Looking at the players involved, I hope they have the courage to tell that story, warts and all.

1,2,3, The Return of Some Old Favs

If it ain't broke, kill off some characters and add an actor from Melrose Place.

Returning television shows have a tough job -- they have to both catch the magic of previous seasons and continue to make old characters interesting, all the while introducing new people and themes in order to keep things fresh. Most shows aren't able to do it. Some get cancelled because people stop watching (see Alias). Others, inexplicably, keep going, year after year, long after they have anything left to say (see ER). It's rare that a TV show is able to string together a good five or six seasons, and keep ratings up in the process. Shows aren't allowed to build slowly over time anymore. Nowadays, they burst out of the gate, then fizzle into mediocrity. Alias, ER, the West Wing and 24 are perfect examples of shows that peaked early and were never able to recover.

For shows like Lost, Veronica Mars, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, 2006-07 could be their make-or-break year. Do they have the staying power to launch themselves for an extended stay on network TV? Here are my three returning shows for your life, that are actually for my life, but by extension, if this blog IS your life, then ergo these shows are for your life, too, except if you don't have a TV, and you still read this blog hoping I'll talk about politics or theology again, which maybe I will, but not until after the November sweeps.

1) Lost -- The "Season of the Hatch" was an interesting one. Mostly good, but some bad. In a bit of really lame-lameness, the creators decided to kill off half the new characters they introduced last year just because they couldn't figure out how to write them in an interesting and likeable way. They've done this before, with Boone and Shannon, and it's getting to be kind of a ridiculous crutch. This character is boring. Let's kill them off during sweeps week! But bygones, the hatch is exploded, bring on season 3!

Lost promises two blocks of no-repeat episodes this year, six this fall, then continuing in early 2007 with 17 more. The first block is supposed to answer all our questions about why The Others wanted Jack, Kate and Sawyer. And maybe about that giant foot, too. As long as we get a Hurley or Locke episode to boot, I think I'll be happy.

2) Veronica Mars -- Yes, I know I just wrote about this show earlier in the week, but having stuffed a whole season into my head since June, I'm super-crazy about season 3 of VM, too. Like I said before, Rob Thomas has promised three mini-mysteries across the course of the season, lasting six or seven episodes each. Plus, Miss Mars and Co. go to college. As any good Buffy fan ought to know, college episodes mean excitement: i.e., drinking, lesbians, snooty profs and general sluttiness abound. Regardless, VM ought to be it's snappy, snazzy self, with lots of Nancy Drew 2.0 goodness. And Kristen Bell? Still the cutest thing on TV. From my mouth to God's ear. Honest.

3) Smallville -- Score two for the new CW! After the mess that was Superman Returns (albeit a beautiful mess at times), it's time to get back to our generation's Superman, the boy/man Tom Welling. The other show I've been catching up on old times with this summer, Smallville is hurtling toward a sixth season that brings C. Kent another step closer to the big blue suit: A knock-down, drag-out slug-fest with none other than the notorious General Zod -- possessing the body of Lex Luthor no less!

Lot's of other things need resolving, too. Like, will Lana still have the hots for Lex now that he's a lunatic general from Krypton? Will Chloe still have the hots for Clark now that Jimmy Olsen is in the picture? Will Lois ever have the hots for anyone? And finally, can the sheer amount of teen-tear-jerk-drama be overcome by awesome fist fights between super-powered aliens? Come on kid Kal-El, show Bryan Singer just exactly what his movie lacked: Superman punching people through walls!

Honorable mentions:

1. Family Guy -- Only because Adult Swim re-airs the episodes late at night. Sunday evening has never been a big TV night for me. I don't know why.
2. Prison Break -- The one returning show that I'm 100% certain will be better this season than last. What was once kind of a lame bottle-show is now suddenly an updated version of The Fugitive for the 21st century. How can you flipping mess that up?
   
3. Law & Orders/CSIs -- Boring copper/law procedurals should be forced to watch episodes of Life on Mars, then cancel themselves forever.
4. Boston Legal -- I watched this show once. It was 17% funny. But I like James Spader, so maybe it gets another shot. Oh wait, it's about lawyers. (See #3.)
5. Grey's Anatomy/House -- Medical dramas. I have nothing good to say. Which is sad because Hugh Laurie was a kick-ass Jeeves.
6. Ghost Whisperer -- I used to think Jennifer Hewitt was pretty. Then I saw her with those bangs. I'm very confused now.

So that's it. I'm sorry if I insulted your show. Feel free to insult mine in return. Or better yet, insult J.L. Hewitt's hair. That way we can be happy together forever and ever. Amen.

1,2,3, New Shows For You!

Ode to the days of hooded sweatshirts

It’s not fall, that’s easy enough to tell by a quick look at the calendar. But with the mild temps we’ve been having, you could have fooled me. It’s hoodie weather at night around here, which means it’s ye olde tyme for back-to-school, American football and a ton of new television shows, half of which won’t make it out of 2006.

What’s surprising this year is the sheer number of new programs that demand quite a bit of audience loyalty, from episode to episode, in order to understand the over-arching plot(s) of the series. Shows like Law & Order, CSI and (to a certain extent) ER consist largely of self-contained episodes -- meaning if you miss a few it’s still relatively easy to pick it back up. Yet as network TV loses ground to cable in the ratings game, they’ve gone to both cheaper programming (in the guise of reality TV) and shows that demand a higher level of audience allegiance. Sometimes it works (see Lost and 24), other times the shows can’t find a big enough audience, and they goes caput (see Invasion or Firefly), leaving fans more than a bit disgruntled, having invested so much in a story and its characters only to have it disappear forever (unless you’re lucky enough to have a creator like Joss Whedon, that is).

The networks are taking a risk by offering so many of these serialized shows, because if they don’t pan out, they could have a pretty pissed off audience, who are already getting more and more of their entertainment content on the web. I’m sort of a chronologically disabled uber-geek in the fact that I still really like TV, and really don’t want it to go anywhere. Maybe that’s a topic for another post, because it’s time to get to the new shows I’m looking forward to this fall. Excitement!

1) Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip -- Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme return, bringing their long, steady-cam takes and snappy, endlessly entertaining dialogue back to NBC. After having explored the sporting world and the DC Beltway, they’ve set their guns on Hollywood this time around. Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, D.L. Hughley and just about everyone else in the whole wide world star as the players and producers of an SNL-like sketch comedy show. Look for Sorkin to skewer his own back-stage shenanigans while writing and producing both Sports Nite and The West Wing, i.e., someone’s gonna be ridin’ the white pony.

2) The Nine -- The only new show that can boast the best time slot in all of TV -- that 10 o’clock hour after Lost -- The Nine follows the trials and tribulations of nine individuals who are held hostage during a 52-hour bank robbery. Each episode will start out with a flashback to the robbery, setting up how the lives of the hostages have changed since the incident, allowing all sorts of people to laugh, cry and have sex that they wouldn' t have had otherwise.

3) Kidnapped -- Surprisingly, another cop-ish type drama falls into my list of TV likes. In what looks like an engrossing premise, each season will follow one kidnapping case as FBI, police, and private investigators interact in their quest to solve the case. Who knows whether it will hold my attention or not, but what it’s really got going for it at this point is the involvement of Delroy Lindo as a part of the cast. So if nothing else, it’s good to see Dr. Ed 'Braz' Brazzleton (from The Core, silly!) on the small screen.

Honorable mentions:

• Vanished -- Whereas Kidnapped involves an actual kidnapping, Fox’s version is a bit more ambiguous. The show’s creators haven’t commented on how they’ll deal with a season two (should they get there), because they’re adamant that the entire series will revolve on the disappearance of a Senator’s wife in the first episode. Unless it’s done right, this one might be long gone by New Year’s.
• Heroes -- Heroes would have made my Top 3, but for the fact that NBC has yet to prove they have an air-worthy pilot episode for the series. Since sneak-peeking some scenes last May, the pilot has been re-edited in mysterious, as-yet-to-be-revealed ways in order to satisfy certain network execs. Usually pilot problems aren’t a good sign, but since it’s a show about normal people who find themselves with super-powers (starring the lovable Greg Grunberg to boot), I’ll be around for at least a few weeks to give it a shot.
• 30 Rock -- Tina Fey’s half-hour, single-cam comedy about a fictional SNL-type show (yes, that’s two, count ‘em two, both on NBC!), starring Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Rachel Dratch and Miss Fey herself. Maybe this has the potential to fill the whole in my heart left by the cancellation of Arrested Development. Maybe not. But God knows The Office and Earl can’t, so I’ve got to look somewhere….
• Jericho -- All I know about this show is that it follows a small, Midwestern town in the wake of a nuclear attack on American soil. And it’s on CBS. I give it a 10% chance to get to the November sweeps. Let’s see if the writing staff can execute on what’s at the very least an intruiging premise.
• Six Degrees -- The latest drama from golden boy J.J. Abrams, this one looks to be more Felicity than Alias, as it follows the lives of six interconnected, young strangers in the big, bad city. Six Degrees basically sounds like The Nine but without the cool, bank-heist angle, and the previews ABC has shows so far have been ultra-schmaltzy, with some third-string, U2 rip-off band providing the soundtrack. I’ll give J.J. a chance, but with nary a secret agent or mystery island in sight, I’m not too keen on this one’s chances.

Sadly, there are no new series with an extraterrestrial bent, which means my X-Files fix will have to come from actual reruns of the X-Files. *Tear*

Uggh. Just thinking about how many of these new shows could suck is kind of a bummer. But if there’s just one Lost or 24 among the bunch, it could be worth the pain of a glut of crappy pilots. As for my returning faves, I’ve written way too much already, so we’ll leave that for another day.

********

“A little television is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely awesome.” -- Oscar Wilde.

1,2,3 Summer Cable Craziness!

What I've been watching besides Cartoon Network

Oh those long months of summer reruns. Sure, there's plenty of hours every day to do those things you're supposed to do during the summer, like:

1. Walk outside.
2. Read outside.
3. Bike outside.
   
4. Sleep outside.
5. Get nose burns outside.
6. Get shoulder burns outside.
7. Watch the Latino kids play soccer outside.
8. Watch the Indian kids play cricket outside.
9. Watch fighter pilots play pretend war outside.
10. Refuse to, under any circumstances, run outside.

But those things can only fill up so many hours every day, leaving one with little to do during those lazy summer nights between 7-10pm (8-11 Eastern). And that's where the cable TV comes in. Summer is the time when many cable stations will air new episodes of their original programs. And because I'm blogging about TV all of the sudden, I thought I'd let ya'll know which of those shows I've enjoyed most.

1) Psych -- Relentlessly light and unabashedly fluffy, Psych is a Crime-Lite program in the vein of Monk, where the actual murder is really of secondary importance to the main characters. Sure, there's a crime to be solved in every episode, but the entertainment value of the show comes from interaction between Sean, a fake-psychic detective, and his friend Gus, the straight man of the comedy pair (played by old favorite Dule Hill of the West Wing). It's pure summer fun, never too serious for its own good. Crime's get solved, laughs ensue, sometimes there is singing. That's good enough for me.

2) Veronica Mars -- Okay, you're right. It's not cable and it's all reruns, but I've been watching it all summer regardless. I missed all 21 episodes of VM following the season premiere last September, and decided to make up for lost time by catching two episodes every Tuesday night as best I could. If you've never seen or heard of the show, it's basically Nancy Drew for the Gen-Y set -- Veronica Mars, teenage private investigator, who takes on cases for fellow students ranging from stolen laptop files to murdered pets, while assisting her PI dad on the bigger cases that crop up from time to time.

The show is tightly written and plotted out, with just the right blend of humor and whodunnit. While the bus crash mystery of season two is a bit hard to follow, it's still been a helluva good time sifting through suspects, witnesses and red herrings. Show creator Rob Thomas (no, not THAT Rob Thomas) has promised smaller story arcs for season three, giving new viewers more chances to jump on board the ol' VM train. And did I mention that Kristen Bell is about the cutest thing on TV ever? It's true.

3) Life on Mars -- From the fine folks at the BBC, Life on Mars tells the story of a modern day Brit cop, Sam Tyler, who suffers an accident and wakes up in 1973. Having no way of knowing if what he's experiencing is dream or reality, he finds himself living his life as a cop during a very different time -- when David Bowie was more than just that creepy guy with a glass eye.

It's funny that all of my favs this summer are detective shows, seeing as how I pretty much hate police procedurals. Life on Mars is the only one whose main character is a cop, but it's done in such a fun way that I can ignore that fact. The show doesn't explain what has happened to Sam -- if it's all a rather elaborate illusion, or if he's really living in the past -- and there are surreal moments when people from 2006, like his mother or his doctor, talk to him through his television set or in his dreams. The show revolves around how Sam's 21st century detective techniques, like his forensic skills and refusal to take money from local crime bosses, clash with the inspectors of 1973 Manchester. And the music is pretty much boss. Yeah, I said boss.

Honorable mentions:

• Kyle XY -- A diverting little, family drama about a young man with no knowledge of his past who's taken in by a suburban family.
• Smallville -- Catching up on reruns of a network show that I haven't watched in four years.
• Eureka -- A quirky Sci-Fi Channel show about a US Marshall who finds himself the sheriff of an idyllic town of scientific geniuses.
  
• Phil of the Future -- Basically the best kids show on TV. It takes the manic, kiddie-energy of Lizzie McGuire and adds the kind of comedy you might find Arrested Development or Family Guy -- albeit completely Disneyfied, of course.
  

Dishonorable mentions:

• Blade -- Sacrifices all the fun of the movie in order to make it a more serious horror-adventure show. It's on Spike, so I guess I should have expected general suckiness.
• Late Night with Conan O'Brien -- Too many reruns, dangit! Find a guest host already, Conan. Preferably someone named Andy Richter, cutting off pudgy, pretty-boy Carson Daly's hopes of taking over when Conan leaves for the Tonight Show in 2009.

Okay, that's enough TV talk. Until tomorrow when I'll probably write about the excitement of so many shows to choose from this fall! Ooooooh, I just shivered!!

1,2,3, Cartoons!

So apparently The Simpsons grabbed the Emmy for best animated series on Saturday night. Which is pretty much crap, because, while not a connoisseur of the cartoon world, I can easily think of a few series who were more deserving of said award. So here we go again -- Listsville!

1) Family Guy -- Yeah, it's crude as all holy hell. But it's funny as all holy hell, too. And has about the sharpest writing staff in all of television. When it comes to laughs per minute, Family Guy blows The Simpsons out of the water. Insert "low-brow socio-political satire", "pop-culture savvy", or "outright/over-the-top ridiculousness" for "laughs per minute" in that last sentence, and it still stands.

2) The Venture Brothers -- A little known gem on Adult Swim, Venture Brothers is an action-adventure send-up of just about every cartoon and comic-book in existence. It's got the unbalanced, mad scientist, the hulking, secret-agent bodyguard, the loquacious and pompous master of the magical arts, and its own version of the useless Wonder Twins. And it's funny. Real funny. What hurts its chances is probably the amount of nearly incoherent in-jokes about the genres it so mercilessly skewers. Lovers of Jonny Quest, the Hardy Boys and Marvel Comics ought to find it thoroughly engaging.

3) Tom Goes to the Mayor -- I don't even particularly like this show, due to its inconsistency from episode to episode, but with the schlock that Matt Groening has been putting out over the past few years, even this hit-or-miss Adult Swim pseudo-cartoon makes The Simpsons look bad. It's definitely a twisted show. But twisted in a good way. Like Groening used to be.

So Emmy voters, it's alot like that one thing Stewie said that one time on Family Guy:

Ha! I got your hat! Take that, hatless! Now go back to the quad and resume your hackey sac tourney! I'm not gonna lay down for some frat boy bastard with his damn Teva sandals and his Skoal Bandits and his Abercrombie and Fitch long sleeved, open stitched, crew neck Henley smoking his sticky buds out of a soda can while watching his favorite downloaded Simpsons episodes every night! Yes, we all love "Mr. Plow"! Oh, you've got the song memorized, do you? SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE! That is exactly the kind of idiot you see at Taco Bell at 1 in the morning! The guy who just whiffed his way down the bar skank ladder!

Yeah, just like that....

TV Is Here Again

Kind-of-sort-of-almost-Fall

Let's just own up to one thing. I really like television.

Books or films with ambiguous endings are the bees-knees to my little brain. Likewise for serialized storytelling in any form. And because both techniques allow for a more engaged audience (at least in my experience), those are the types of stories that really grab me by the Dungarees. Having stories expand within the confines of my own head is a favorite past-time of mine, most likely because I tend to favor art and storytelling as a subjective experience -- my experience, dammit! -- rather than as an objective author-to-audience broadcast with no room for feedback or multiple interpretations. Bor-ing.

What I mean by all that lit-crit-babble is that the stories I like best are ones that keep going, whether in my mind or on the screen/page. So while I enjoy films and books with concrete endings, I enjoy serials, if done right, even more. Sure, The Great Gatsby is a fantastic novel, but I've found more enjoyment in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien that I have in the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but it's true for me, nonetheless.

Following that (il)logic, maybe that's why I'm eagerly looking forward to new seasons of Lost and Veronica Mars, as well as a host of new shows following this kind of serialized storytelling technique. For the longest time, TV was so boring to me, what with the cut-and-dry CSI and Law & Order franchises dominating the airwaves. But now I'm actually excited about television again, which in my book is a pretty good thing.

Granted, all stories must have an end. But sometimes it's just nicer if that end lies five or six years down the road.

I've had it with these motherfucking critics on this motherfucking plane!

Sometime in the year that was Wisconsin/Chicago 2005 (not to be confused with the summer music festival Wisconsin/Chicago 2005, which existed only in my head), I watched an interview with Samuel L. Jackson on Conan O'Brien wherein a number of things were bandied about and discussed. At the tail end of the interview, Mr. Jackson offhandedly mentioned how he was doing a film called Snakes an a Plane, and that he had taken the part after having only seen the title page of the script. And with that I was onboard, too.

At some point doing the production of said film, known on the internets as SoaP, the studio big wigs were on the verge of renaming it Pacific Air Flight 121, to which Mr. Jackson and many others promptly stood up and said, "No, good sirs, that would be a mistake of untold proportions." (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) His objections, and the fact that some movie goers might unknowingly mistake SoaP with that other summer plane movie about a more serious and factual airline disaster, caused the studio to stick with Snakes on a Plane. Which, according to Chuck Klosterman, might have been a mistake.

While Mr. Klosterman holds the unfortunate belief that Appetite for Destruction is the best album of the 1980s, he is, for the most part, a very witty and oftentimes erudite observer of pop culture -- sort of like the Dave Berry of my generation. Only with more Schedule I drug references. And he's never written a movie starring Tim Allen, either. But one can hope.

Time will tell if Mr. Klosterman's prediction that SoaP's production and marketing strategy will spawn a whole host of fan-on-demand choose-your-own-adventure flicks. One can imagine the possible direct-to-DVD sequels to SoaP. (Am I the only one to have seen Anaconda 4 and Cruel Intentions 13 on that one rack in the back of Wal-Mart?) Yet, it's hard to figure how another movie could duplicate the type of internet buzz SoaP has enjoyed for the past few months, even while in its preproduction stage (ie, before principle photography had even started). Regardless, Mr. Klosterman's article on the Esquire website is a fun read, at the very least, for it's amusing anecdote concerning inappropriate comments shouted at movie screens during trailers for the aforementioned 9/11 airline film.

And also for its discussion of the concept of irony, a notion which, after some 20-30 odd credit hours in English Lit, I still don't completely understand.