While I was watching television last night, I couldn't help but wonder: is HBO's slightly irritating high-brow marketing strategy to blame for The Wire's piddling ratings share? (I'm convinced, by the way, that the marketing strategy was pitched something like this: "We have a great show on our hands: it's energetic, emotional, entertaining - I know! Let's only focus on talking about how complicated and impossible to follow it is. Then we'll snag that coveted 35-to-pretentious demo. Victory!")
The reason I couldn't help but wonder was this: I was watching American Gladiators. Which had an extremely promising Nielsen debut on Sunday night and probably had nearly as many viewers on Monday. So in between the important intellectual tasks of trying to figure out if the Travelator is fixed or exactly how old Wolf is, my brain was doing something like this: American Gladiators, many viewers! The Wire, not so many viewers! American Gladiators, many viewers! The Wire, not so many viewers!
Eventually, the solution to The Wire's rating problems became clear:
morituri te salutamus
play or get played
I'm finally emerging from a three-week cluster-fuck of publicity, international travel, and familial interaction, each of which exhaust me to a similar degree, which is to say completely. Next week I'll have belated dispatches from Budapest, thoughts on Hungarian, and a sneak peek at the awesomely cracked-out 2008 calendar I got from my local grocery store.
Nothing, however, deserves my first-post-of-the-new-year slot so much as this: The Best Show on Television. The fifth and final season of The Wire premieres this Sunday on HBO, and I feel that it's my duty as someone who typically watches upwards of 80 hours of television a week to do my own small grass-roots part and remind people to set their TiVos or DVRs or VCRs or even - gasp! - to make a note to actually sit down at 9pm and watch the thing like back in the old days. (And if you have HBO OnDemand, you'll find that the season premiere is already available for viewing.)
The Wire is so much better than anything else on television that some might consider it an insult to call it mere television. But I'm Midwestern, earnest, and full of a surprising amount of optimism after the results of last night's caucus (on the Democratic side, in any case), so I choose instead to think that The Wire is one of the few shows that actually does my idea of "television" justice.
Initially, I resisted The Wire as a starlet eschews sobriety. Which surprises even me, in retrospect, because the great Homicide: Life on the Street (another David Simon and Ed Burns project) was a defining show for me growing up. True story: I once wrote a short story for my freshman English class about an imagined interrogation between a serial killer and Andre Braugher's Detective Pembleton. But in the early years of The Wire's run, I was far too emotionally invested in Six Feet Under to consider trying out another of HBO's serial offerings, no matter how sentimental I might have been about the series creators.
Then, last year, the fourth season of The Wire really, finally started to garner some serious mainstream attention. Which, for me, had the opposite effect of that intended: I was just plain put off. I felt like I was being force-fed by ostentatiously liberal TV critics, the kind of critics who were just so thrilled to be championing a show about the inner city, because that made them so fucking real, yo. So many of those pieces felt to me like lady-doth-protests-too-much pleas by the super-white and super-privileged. Like, "We watch The Wire every week! With our black friends - of whom we have many, by the way!"
My response was something along the lines of "Fuck that, I already sat through Crash because of you motherfuckers - and I have me some Wife Swap to watch."
Then, this summer, something amazing happened: my beloved St. Louis Cardinals started sucking. Which opened up a lot of free time for me. So I finally picked up the first season of The Wire.
And: holy shit. When I say Best Show on Television, I am not using hyperbole.
Watching The Wire is like watching a 55-minute master class - in acting, in writing, and in the righteous fury of the disenfranchised. And it's not just watchable for its impeccably researched look into the nuts and bolts of the drug trade or law enforcement or city politics. What makes the show so uniquely compelling is its startling depth of human compassion coupled with its clear-eyed understanding of the inherent brutality of the system, a system that will grind you up and spit you out, no matter what your intentions, no matter what your excuses. You don't just watch the characters on The Wire, you love them - no matter how flawed they might be. And you will rage and rage against the forces that keep these characters so impossibly down.
Because this show is as real as it gets, and if you don't respond on a visceral level to that realness, then I might suggest that you double-check to make sure you're not some sort of early model replicant.
Case in point: my favorite character is Omar Little (no relation), a gay stick-up artist/legend/poet/assassin. The law would label him a murderer. And a lesser show would make him a villain. But on The Wire, Omar takes his mother to church every Sunday. He treats Butchie, the blind bar owner, like his own father. And he loves Honey Nut Cheerios. Every episode, I root for Omar. But I don't root for his redemption necessarily. Nor do I necessarily cheer him on in his more criminal behavior. I just want him alive and living free and honest. In season four he argues that the truth means something, telling Detective (The Bunk) Moreland that "a man's got to have a code." I want him to have the chance to keep on living by that code.
But, in the end, what The Wire has done for me is much more than turn me on to a bad-ass, brilliant homosexual. Which, since this is me we're talking about, is pretty much the definition of shooting fish in a barrel. (Related aside: I would argue that the privileged white version of Omar is Greg House. Discuss.) What the Wire has done for me is, in fact, the greatest gift I could ask for: it got me thinking again.
Let me explain, in the aforementioned earnest Midwestern style:
I grew up in St. Louis, which, along with Detroit, is right up there with Baltimore in the competition for most fucked-up urban environment. Whenever the year's crime stats come out, friends and acquaintances invariably ask me what it was like for me living in what the numbers seem to indicate is basically an out-and-out war zone. Here's the thing, though: I hardly saw that side of the city.
I was born and raised just outside the city limits, in a place called University City. Many might argue (and many have argued) that U-City isn't nearly as sheltered as other St. Louis suburbs. After all, it does abut the city proper, and it's also an area that seems to be a poster city for racial diversity - it's about half black and half white. In St. Louis county, it has a reputation for being progressive and open-minded and even a little bit dangerous. When I was in elementary school, the mother of a classmate once expressed concern to my mother that we lived in an area with so many potential "criminal elements." (I leave it to you to read between those lines.)
So usually, U-City residents are crown-to-toe top-full with pride for their vibrant, diverse community. President Clinton even came to speak in front of our city hall when I was in high school, praising all of us for coexisting so well. Yay, us!
Except for this one small detail. There are two main east-west corridors in U-City: Delmar and Olive boulevards. North of Olive, the white population falls to nearly nothing. South of Delmar, the same thing happens to the black population.
In other words - in honest words - U-City is in fact a poster city not for diverse coexistence, but instead for the country-wide trend of micro-segregation that county-level census data so cleanly covers up.
What I thought was better was actually worse: because I had no excuse, no excuse whatsoever for being so blind to the realities of my city. I thought that I understood the city because I was in a nominally diverse environment, because I had friends of many colors, because I played basketball with a bunch of girls from the city in some seriously shitty neighborhoods. But the truth is this: I lived a mile away from urban heartbreak for eighteen years and was able to pretty much ignore everything that was going on around me - the crime, the poverty, the drugs, the deteriorating schools.
And then - then! - I moved to New York. And once again praised myself for living in diverse areas, moving from nearly inner-city to outer-borough. And I was doing the exact same thing, keeping my head down while wrapping my progressive neighborhood identity around me like a complimentary PBS-pledge-drive muffler.
It took The Wire to give me a good, hard kick in the hypocrisy.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that I'm now, like, down with the thug life or whatever. I don't run a drug-outreach program or write about the institutional inequalities in the nation's schools or lobby for changes in the nation's foster-care programs. I write about language and books and television. Let's be honest: in the grand scheme of things, I'm just another sheltered, privileged asshole. But now I'm seeing things I wasn't seeing before. I'm a little more aware.
And I'm thinking more and more - which is what, in my heart of hearts, I believe the best television - the best art - should do.
Thinking isn't doing; thinking isn't changing. But it's a good first step.
So make a New Year's resolution and watch the goddamn show already. Because if you think being a mile away from the realities of the American City and still managing to ignore them is reprehensible, recalculate that equation based on the distance from your couch to your TV and see how you feel then.
reason #1,033 why you should be watching friday night lights
Did anyone else notice that during last week’s Friday Night Lights NBC ran a onscreen banner that read “Get your own Tim Riggins” (and then, in much smaller print below that, “… jersey at NBC.com”)?
Seems like someone over in marketing finally realized what they’re doing.
californication
(Spoilers for The O.C. ahead - don't say I didn't warn you. Although if you're at all acquainted with this thing I like to call "the Internet", you probably already know anyway.)
So.
The O.C. killed off Marissa last night.
And even though it was the most slap-dash, montage-filled episode ever (which is saying a lot for The O.C.) ...
THEY FUCKING KILLED MARISSA.
Yeah, sure, I was knew it was coming, but nothing was able to ruin the experience me - I just added "when I'm dead" every time Marissa spoke. Surprisingly, it never got old. Which is a rare thing when Mischa Barton is involved.
I do admit that I would have preferred if Marissa's body had still been in the car when it burst into flames, if only so I could have some idea as to the flammablilty of Marc Jacobs when mixed with cocaine, but still, if that wasn't one of the most satisfying hours of television I've seen in ages, I don't know what is.
All that being said:
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, I BEG OF YOU, PLEASE - NO MORE COVERS OF HALLELUJAH. I've said it before and I'll say it again. And again. Until somebody, somewhere in television realizes that's it's really fucking old. There are other desperately sad songs in the world, I just know there are. And anyway, doesn't Josh Schwartz have Modest Mouse on his speed dial?
Maybe he does. In which case the conversation probably went something like this:
Josh: Hey, Isaac, so we need, like, a crazy sad sort of ballad thing - you got anything?
Isaac: No, man, we're too fuckin' busy working on our next record.
Josh: Yeah? What's it called?
Isaac: We don't have a title yet, but I've been reading a lot of Ayn Rand lately. We'll come up with something.
Josh: Well that's great and all, but shit, what am I supposed to do then?
Isaac: How about that song - ?
Josh: Which one?
Isaac: You know, that really fuckin' sad song - ?
Josh: You're not helping me here.
Isaac: Hosanna or some shit.
Josh: You mean Hallelujah?
Isaac: That's the one!
Josh: Hasn't everybody already used that, though? Haven't we used that before?
Isaac: So find another cover.
Josh: Not just any cover - an alternative, indie cover. Sung by a girl! Urban Dictionary is right, Isaac - you are a genius!
FIND ANOTHER SONG, PEOPLE. You may have won me over last night, but you can only kill Mischa Barton so many times. Move the fuck on.
grey matters
Just a reminder for anyone with an automatic television-recording device: tonight's presidential address could conceivably fuck with all sorts of network sweeps programming, most notably 24 and the two-hour Grey's Anatomy finale. Adjust your DVR accordingly.
By the way, if anyone else is, like me, a slightly self-hating Grey's Anatomy addict, I cannot stress enough how important it is to avoid reading the comments on the Grey's Anatomy writers' blog.
A representative but relatively benign sample:
AMAZINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!OMG, i'm freaking out!!!! I seriously can't wait for tomm!!!!!
all i have to say about last night's episode is: OMG!!!!! SERIOUSLY! i can't wait til tonight! i would gladly miss two and half men any day for my grey's!!!
Oh my gawd! I can't wait until 2morrow! Great show! i love it!
OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD!!
Because the only thing worse than writing comments like this is identifying with comments like this - and possessing the necessary self-awareness to recognize that you're a total loser for doing so.
basic-cable battle: round one
(An intented-to-be continuing series in which Annie and I take our love of television and beat it down, hard. Every week, we’ll each pick a program from the bowels of basic cable ... and make the other watch it. And provide written evidence of that fact. Death is not an option. You can find Annie's response here.)
This week: WWE Monday Night RAW (USA) vs. What's in the Bag? (The Golf Channel)
Now, I’d say that I’ve studied some moderately complicated subjects in my time: Chinese politics, French deconstructionism, The X-Files. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for this, my first foray into the labyrinthine world of professional wrestling. I had to watch this fucking thing twice and spend like an hour on google just to have the tiniest goddamn clue what the hell was going on.
So I apologize in advance for any factual errors that appear in this account. Of course, in the WWE “fact” and “fiction” are impossibly blurred, so it probably doesn’t matter anyway. James Frey and JT LeRoy should consider the possible career opportunities.
Like many of my favorite shows, WWE Monday Night RAW begins with a lengthy montage of previouslys, bringing us up to speed on past events and highlighting important moments that will play a role in tonight’s episode. We open on a guy in a tank top. And a guy in a suit. And some other guy. Everyone seems pretty angry.
WWE Rule #1: Everyone always seems pretty angry.
Tank-top guy turns out to be Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWE and spiritual leader of the newly created religion, McMahonism. Suit Guy is his son, Shane, who according to kayfabe kanon was responsible for the purchase of the rival WCW. (In actuality, I suspect that AOL Time Warner’s mercurial nature also played a role). Other Guy is Shawn “Michael Shawn Hickenbottom” Michaels, aka The Heartbreak Kid.
WWE Rule #2: Every wrestler has at least sixteen names.
HBK (as we wrestling fans like to call him) was a key player in the infamous “Montreal Screwjob”, an event that seems to be roughly on wrestling par with the Pete Rose gambling scandal. And roughly on narrative par with, I don’t know, Gravity’s Rainbow. That shit is complicated. My favorite part of the story is this: “After McMahon tried to apologize to [Bret “Hitman”] Hart, he was told to get out or get punched in the face. McMahon refused to leave and got punched in the face.”
WWE Rule #3: If a wrestler threatens to punch you in the face, you should probably take it seriously.
Anyway, HBK and McMahon are now involved in some kind of feud, which came to a literal head in last week’s match when McMahon dropped his pants – to reveal what looked suspiciously like a Body by Victoria high-leg brief – and The Kid grabbed Shane’s face … and shoved it into his father’s ass cheeks.
This was, apparently, payback for HBK having his own face shoved into the aforementioned ass back in February.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.
Question: Is this really the Vince McMahon who owns WWE, Inc.? Or is it a professional-wrestling actor, standing in for the real Vince McMahon? Because the thought of this man running a multi-million-dollar business by day and then having wrestler-face shoved in his ass by night ... well, is actually probably more common than I think. But still: what is real, here? Is any of it real? When two performers are in a “real-life” relationship, is that really real? Or is that some sort of mid-range real, between wrestling-real and actual-real? HELP.
Credits. Metal rock music. People hitting people. Sugar. Spice. Everything nice.
The show tonight comes to us all the way from London, England. The arena is filled to the brim with screaming, chest-thumping, barely-literate-sign-holding fans. I stock this information away for the next time an Anglophile friend claims that English taste is more refined than ours.
A spastic light cue heralds the arrival of our first performer of the night, Edge (not to be confused with The Edge), the “Rated-R Superstar”. He looks suspiciously like the love child of The Rock and Matthew Lillard, which makes me wonder: whatever happened to either of those guys?
The audience reaction to Edge is mixed, but I suspect he plays a villain. I may or may not be basing that entirely on the audience sign that reads “Edge = crap”. He is accompanied by his girlfriend Lita, who is classing up the joint in a barely-there zebra-print bustier. Edge jumps up into the ring and, after thrusting his pelvis into the mat a few times for Rated-R effect, licks Lita affectionately. Aww.
The commentators scare the shit out of me when they mention the possibility of “some of those live sex celebrations tonight”. Apparently Edge and Lita promised this a while back but have yet to do much more than arrange for Lita to have a wardrobe malfunction during one particularly raucous make-out session.
Question: Are there often live sex celebrations on Monday Night RAW? Or do they save that action for UPN?
Edge grandstands a bit over the PA about the upcoming “triple-threat championship match” between him, Triple H, and John Cena. It’s all pretty standard posturing until he has to get all nationalistic, entreating the audience to enjoy the show “whether you're British or American or - like myself - the clearly superior Canadian.”
My entire family cringes.
Suddenly, the lights go apeshit again and the cameras cut to a huge graphic of a floating skull. And in walks Triple H, to thunderous applause.
WWE Rule #4: 50% of any given program is devoted to extended entrance spectaculars.
Fun fact! Triple H was originally known as Hunter Helmsley Hearst, a rich-kid villain from Greenwich, CT with a fondness for proper etiquette.
Miss Manners is, apparently, long gone. Triple H immediately grabs the mike and starts in on the sass. “Edge, you've come a long way, you have - I mean, look at you, you look like a star. You walk like a champion, you talk like a champion, you act like a champion. Hell - you were a champion … for three weeks."
Whereas if he really were a spoiled brat from Greenwich, he’d just stomp his foot and scream “I went to Princeton!” and storm out.
Triple H continues: “That doesn’t mean anything. It means you can go … you just can’t go very long. Nothing to be ashamed about, a lot of guys have that problem. You know, they get going and just when it’s starting to get interesting … geughaagh. It’s over.” Yes, Triple H just onamotapoeticized premature ejaculation. One of my ovaries just shriveled up and died. “Hey I gotta way that may you can turn this whole thing around, maybe get yourself an endorsement deal, you know, it’s little, it’s blue …”
The audience reacts with an “Oh no, he didn’t” noise, which makes me wonder: Does Viagra look the same in the UK? Or is there perhaps a bit of cultural misunderstanding at work – is it possible that Triple H just suggested that Edge would be an excellent spokesman for, say, paracetamol?
Anyway, they snipe, they snipe, they snipe they snipe they snipe. Itchy has performance issues in the bedroom, but in the ring he beat Scratchy’s ass in three minutes! Whatever, dude, Scratchy doesn’t care that he lost to Itchy – he just wanted to send Poochie a message!
And, with an explosion of rap music, in swaggers Poochie himself: white rapper John Cena, in head-to-toe hip-hop wear and a shirt that reads “Hustle Loyalty Respect”. If it’s okay with everybody, I’m going to withhold my respect until I hear his album, “You Can’t See Me” (with Tha Trademarc). I’m sure it’s excellent, but I like to be cautious. He gets up to the ring and – FIGHT! They throw each other against the ropes and in, like, two seconds, Cena has his shirt off – and, oh, ew, Triple H’s shirt is off, too.
Edge just stands off to the side and grosses out with Lita.
But before anyone can get going – hold on, what’s this? A group of ... male cheerleaders? Called the Spirit Squad???
WWE Rule #5: The WWE defies logic.
The cheerleaders shout something perky and incomprehensible and the wrestlers look as confused as I feel. Apparently, McMahon has sent down word from above that the three boys will fight the Spirit Squad in a 5-on-3 match at the end of the night. The wrestlers stare down. The Spirit Squad cheers. I yawn. Exeunt.
Next up is the midcard 3-on-3 tag-team event, which means – you guessed it – six separate entrance spectaculars. First is Chris “The Masterpiece” Masters, he of the traditional body-builder physique. He appears to be wearing a diaper. He poses for the audience while images of his gleaming pectoral muscles flash on a screen behind him.
Second is Matt “Striker” Striker. He also appears to be wearing a diaper. And an argyle sweater vest, which alludes, I imagine, to his role as host of Matt Striker’s Classroom and his previous career as a Social Studies teacher in Queens. He was fired when he confused “sick days” with “wrestling in Japan days”.
Then we have Shelton Benjamin, Carlito, and Charlie Haas, none of whom particularly interest me. Mr. Haas, however, appears to have lost a bet: the man is dressed in hot pants (red with orange flames) and a black leather vest.
Fun fact! A closet champion is “a current titleholder (usually a heel [Ed note – “villain”]) who ducks top-flight competition, cheats to win (usually by managerial interference), and – when forced to wrestle good opponents – deliberately causes himself to be disqualified (since titles often do not change hands by disqualification) to retain his title.”
The last contestant is Rob Van Dam, “Mr. Money in the Bank”. He is the evening’s biggest sartorial freakshow thus far, dressed in thigh-high boots and a yellow-and-black striped singlet that reads “1 of a kind”.
For the love of Diana Vreeland, I hope that this is true.
The fight begins, and after a few dull moments RVD takes control of the match, leaping up and grabbing Shelton Benjamin’s head between his thighs and then back-flipping him across the ring. Then, he jumps up, high-kicks the dude, and knocks him out of the ring. Hardly pausing to catch his breath, he balances himself on the ropes and dive-bombs Benjamin and a teammate.
From then on, the fight devolves into a crazily confusing brawl. Even the commentators “don’t know who the legal man is”. (Although this seems slightly disingenuous in that it implies that there are actual rules to this match.) In any case, everybody’s just jumping on everybody else. Eventually, RVD executes a “Rolling Thunder” (a combination of a somersault and a senton) and pins Carlito to win the match. Exeunt.
We return from commercial to what can only be described as a cut scene. Kane paces back and forth, mumbling furiously to himself. Rehearsing, presumably, his one-man Hamlet. (“To be or NOT to be, Kane. To be or NOT to be.”)
The Big Show approaches the budding thespian and they engage in the traditional wrestlers’ mating dance: the stare-down. Big Show gets in his face: “You and I have been friends. You and I have been partners. We’ve been tag-team champions together. But, as your friend, what’s going on, what’s the big deal?”
Kane grimaces and grits out “You ... said ... that ... date” in a nearly perfect imitation of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford.
Big Show, obviously an admirer of stagecraft himself, plays dumb. “What date? You talking about May 19th?” He’s good. Perhaps he could do a one-man Much Ado.
“Don’t say that.” Kane contorts his face until he looks like he’s passing a kidney stone. Unless he studied with Lee Strasberg, in which case he may actually be passing a kidney stone.
Fun fact! Beaver Face is a “term for making an odd face during a move, usually one of the wrestler’s signature moves. The term was coined off of Matt Hardy, who unintentionally made a face similar to a beaver multiple times during the Twist of Fate.”
“It’s jut a date, Kane, it’s just like any other day,” Big Show says, jovially.
But Kane doesn’t do jovial. “Don’t say that again,” he growls, “Or … ELSE.”
“Or else. Or else?” Big Show laughs. “May … nine … teenth”
Kane doesn’t hesitate. He pounds Big Show on his ear and then grabs his head and slams it into a corrugated metal door. He continues to wail on Big Show until about ten other guys show up and pull Kane off him. Big Show is holding his eye and appears to be bleeding. They call for a doctor.
Fun fact! The Muta scale is “a scale to measure the amount of blood lost by a wrestler in a match, from 0.0 to 1.0. A Muta rating of 0.0 corresponds to no blood loss, and a Muta rating of 1.0 corresponds to the amount of blood lost by The Great Muta during a 1992 match against Hiroshi Hase, during which Muta performed what is widely hailed as the most gruesome bladejob of all time.”
WWE Rule #6: Do not taunt the professional wrestlers.
Now it’s time for the WWE RAW Divas Bikini contest, in which four women with a combined age of about 340 strip down and shake their desiccated flesh for the audience. The highlight of the event comes at the beginning, when the first girl’s name (Candice Michelle) flashes on the screen. For one glorious, near-sighted moment, I thought her name was Candice Bushnelle and I was willing to forgive the WWE all its transgressions.
Fun fact! Going bush means “moving from a major league promotion to a regional or independent promotion”.
Candice wins based on absolutely nothing at all, at which point a tremendously large wrestler enters to the usual (and now irritating) histrionics and fanfare. The best way to describe this guy is like this: if you wanted to make foie gras out of Wesley Snipes’ character in Demolition Man, Viscera (not to be confused with viscera) would be your half-way point. Somewhere along the line, this man’s been subjected to some force-feeding.
Anyway, Viscera (aka The World’s Largest Love Machine) rolls into the ring and tosses the announcer around a bit before making out wetly with Miss Candice. She seems to enjoy it, in any case. Exeunt.
Question: Do professional wrestlers actually get laid? I find this hard to believe.
After the break, Vince McMahon enters, having sensibly replaced his black tank top and track pants with a suit. I still can’t imagine this man at a business meeting, though. Particularly not after he jumps into the ring, grabs the mike, and says these exact words: “Would you please give a warm, Great Britain welcome to my only begotten son, to the product of my omnipotent semen - here is Shane McMahon!” (Unnecessary emphasis mine.)
And my second ovary just shriveled up and died. No biological offspring for me.
Shane enters in a warm-up suit and shortly thereafter HBK comes in, wearing what looks to be a bib.
Question: Do the performers have any input into the costume design? If they don’t, do you think that their costume reveal is, like, the scariest part of their day? Like seeing yourself for the first time on What Not to Wear, but in hell?
They start fighting and I lose interest pretty fast. It’s stunningly unrealistic and you can only sit through the three-count fake-out so many times. Furthermore, Shane appears to be more of a boxer than a wrestler, which is, as it turns out, significantly harder to fake convincingly. So they go about throwing each other into the ropes and into the posts and I think about maybe checking to see if What’s in the Bag? is still on.
I really do want to know what’s in that bag.
But wait! Vince intervenes and pins HBK on the announcers’ table, which is about five feet from the side of the ring. Shane climbs up to the ring post and leaps spectacularly out into the air to land hard on HBK, breaking the table in the process. The two men lie prone on the floor as Vince attends to his son and babbles hallelujahs.
Admittedly, that was not an uncool stunt. The match is declared a draw.
WWE Rule #7: When in doubt, add acrobatics. When still in doubt, add props.
And now, the thoughtful WWE provides us with the answer to the pressing question posed in the earlier Kane/Big Show brawl: “What is Kane’s eerie obsession with the date? The premiere of his movie, See No Evil.”
Ohhhhhh, he’s that Kane.
And See No Evil is his new movie. I totally get it now. And, why, would you look at that, WWE got their hands on a “very, very graphic” making-of featurette! Let’s see what excitement theatergoers have to look forward to:
Blood, gore, blood, boob, blood, gore, gore - “There’s a story, there’s depth” - blood, blood, blood, a big fucking hook coated with blood, blood, blood, to the slinging and the wringing of the blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.
Well, it is his first movie. And we all have to start somewhere right? We can’t just expect to jump into a rich and layered family epic with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep now, can we? Although, a suggestion: I would have been infinitely more likely to see this movie had they stuck with their working title, “Eye Scream Man”.
Now, finally, we get a series of cut scenes to set up the last, climatic match of the night, between the WWE Superstars and the Spirit Squad.
Edge and Lita lecture Cena about the importance of teamwork. Cena is less than excited: “You’re going down [Edge] … quicker than your girlfriend.” That’s a back-handed compliment if ever I heard one.
Edge and Lita canoodle. Disgustingly.
Some dude named Umaga (not to be confused with umago) briefly appears to kick the union-jack-clad ass of British wrestler Steve Lewington.
Lita conspires with Triple H. He thanks her for her help: “I know you have a lot of experience taking on five guys at once.”
The top female wrestlers, who appear to be embroiled in a bit of a Single White Female situation, have a bit of a spat. Steven Weber, however, is not involved, so this is of no interest to us.
And then, finally, after 105 minutes: The Fight.
The Spirit Squad enters ahead of Edge, Triple H, and Cena, each of whom are, remember, on their second entrance spectacular of the night.
The announcers clarify that Edge is from Toronto. My entire family sighs in relief.
Fun fact! International Object is “an alternate term for ‘foreign object.’ In the late 1980's, Ted Turner had a policy on his news networks that all commentators were to not use the word ‘foreign,’ but instead use the word ‘international.’ Wrestling announcers on TBS picked up on this, and a foreign object is still occasionally, jokingly called the ‘international object.’”
Meanwhile, Triple H spits water into the air and Cena continues to out-tool Vanilla Ice.
They mill about in the ring for a few minutes before commencing with the most unremittingly boring portion of the evening. I don’t know if I ran out of stamina at this point of if the match genuinely sucked, but I’m willing to bet the latter. Particularly given the fact that WWE’s pay-per-view event – Backlash – is airing this Sunday. They don’t want to blow their load. It’s like the Buffy filler episodes that always aired in January: after the holidays, before February sweeps ... hey, have we done anything with Dawn lately?
Anyway, the match goes like this: Edge fights. He tags in Triple H. Triple H glares. Triple H fights. He tags in Cena. Cena fights. Cena fights some more. Cena keeps on fighting while Edge and Triple H watch from afar.
Apparently, this is supposed to be suspenseful.
Triple H tags back in and Cena joins him in tossing the Spirit Squad out of the ring. At this point, he and Cena turn on each other while Edge walks off into the distance with Lita in tow.
And we are out. Watch Backlash to find out what happens next, because I’m sure as hell not sitting through that again. Not because it sucked – it didn’t, not entirely – and not because I hate wrestling – I don’t, not really – but because I am too fucking dumb to follow along. I’m already struggling to keep up with Veronica Mars and Lost, here. Any more WWE and my brain might just explode.
Again, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that.
And it could have been worse.
After all, it could have been golf.
my mostly formatted spec script for the abc family channel
CREMASTER OF THE HOUSE
“PILOT”
TEASER
EXT. SUBURB – MORNING
A lush, affluent suburb. Technicolor abounds: emerald-green grass, ruby-red roses, spoon-silver Mercedes. It is perfect, it is peaceful. It is Pleasantville.
But, you know, without the political allegory.
EXT. HIGHBROOKE AVENUE – MORNING
And this, the perfect street in our perfect suburb. We move lazily past a succession of well-manicured lawns and expensively maintained houses. A tow-headed girl frolics in a sprinkler, a good-looking man tosses a baseball with his son, two well-coiffed women chat over a white picket fence. And then we come upon the perfect house: a Victorian-revival, breathtaking in its suburban splendor. Except, of course, for the team of workmen outside, installing what looks to be an elaborate outdoor sculpture.
A MIDDLE-AGED MAN IN PAJAMAS, standing in the driveway across the street, the morning paper hanging limply from his hand as he watches the activity in his new neighbors’ yard, dumb-struck. HIS WIFE, a pleasant-looking woman in a terrycloth bathrobe, comes up behind him, two coffee cups in hand. She hands him a mug and they sip their coffee in mutual horror.
A WORKER PULLS OUT A GIGANTIC, TRUCK-SIZED JAR OF VASELINE.
The couple looks at each other, looks back at the sculpture, and then, after a beat:
Well. There goes the neighborhood.
Off her husband’s reaction …
FADE IN:
INT. BARNEY HOUSE - BEDROOM – MORNING
A king-sized bed. An impeccably modern duvet cover straight out of a magazine. A plush, lovable whale toy. And two, artfully tousled heads of hair: on the left, BJÖRK, on the right, MATTHEW BARNEY. They’re sleeping peacefully.
ONE OF THOSE ALARM CLOCKS THAT'S LIKE AN OLD-FASHIONED ROLODEX. Remember the clock in Groundhog Day? That's the one. It is 7:59am. We watch as the numbers slowly fliiiiip to 8:00. Time to wake up! Except, for a moment, nothing happens. And then – a cacophony of innovative, envelope-pushing sound.
A SMALL GROUP OF MEN AND WOMEN in multicultural garb, standing next to the bed, beat-boxing in six-part harmony. Björk sits up in bed and stretches, adorably, an early-morning smile on her face. Matthew Barney stirs, gropes for another pillow, and pulls it over his head. Björk grabs the toy whale and bats him with it playfully.
Rise and shine, honeybear!
MATTHEW BARNEY
Don’t you think that once, just once we could wake up to something different? NPR, K-ROCK – (wistfully) – Howard Stern?
BJÖRK
(If I had a nickel for every time I've heard this … ) Sweetie, you know how I feel about bad language and instrumentals so early in the morning. Now get out of bed, lazybones, we’ve got a big day ahead of us!
We follow Björk over to her closet. She slides open the door to reveal a rack full of bird costumes, each labeled with a hand-made glitter-pen sign: Black-Browned Albatross, Pied-Billed Grebe, Red-Footed Booby. She grabs one – Chestnut-Breasted Mannikin – and heads toward the door. On her way out, she turns to the choir:
Now, no stopping until Mr. Sleepyhead here gets his cutie-patootie out of bed!
Off Matthew Barney’s muffled curse …
INT. BARNEY HOUSE – KITCHEN – LATER THAT MORNING
Björk sits in a spacious, sun-filled kitchen, eating a bowl of Kashi Go-Lean and absentmindedly stroking her tail feathers. Matthew Barney stumbles in and heads toward the coffee pot. He pours some syrup-thick black coffee into a mug that reads “World’s Greatest Dad (and Contemporary Media Artist)”. He sits down at the counter and flips through the sports section of the Post.
(Angrily) Mother …
Björk shoots him a look.
(Lamely) … freaking Broncos.
He throws the paper across the room and focuses his attention on his ladyfriend.
Hey, didn’t you wear that yesterday?
BJÖRK
No, sweetie, that was the Chinese Grossbeak.
MATTHEW BARNEY
(Under his breath) They all look the same to me.
BJÖRK
Well, that’s not my fault, is it? I’m not the one who hasn’t even opened the Audubon guide I got him for Christmas. (Exasperated beat) I thought you weren’t going to drink coffee anymore.
MATTHEW BARNEY
I’m investigating stimulus, Bee. And caffeine, as you know, is a stimulant. Don’t question my artistic program.
BJÖRK
You know, one day you’re going to have to come up with a better excuse than that.
MATTHEW BARNEY
(To the moon, Alice) I’ll show you a better excuse …
But before he can, the doorbell rings. They are startled out of their squabble.
Who in the world could that be?
Off her adorable, Icelandic confusion …
INT./EXT. BARNEY HOUSE – FRONT DOOR – CONTINUOUS
The couple from across the street – FRANK AND CINDY SANDERSON – stand on the front porch, smiles plastered to their faces. Work on the outdoor sculpture continues in the yard behind them.
(Trying a little too hard) Welcome to the neighborhood!
CINDY
Yes, welcome! We brought you a … uh … gift basket!
The wife hands Matthew Barney what is pretty obviously a hastily thrown-together welcome gift: a Duane Reade shopping bag with a red ribbon tied haphazardly to the handle. Matthew Barney reaches inside and pulls out a bar of soap, a Diet Snapple, and – he lets out a happy gurgle at this – a half-empty bag of Tostitos Lime-flavored tortilla chips. He opens the Tostitos bag and begins shoving the remaining chips into his mouth.
I’m Frank, and this is my wife, Cindy. (Beat) And you are … ?
MATTHEW BARNEY
(With his mouth full) Matthew Barney, contemporary media artist.
The couple gives each other a concerned look. A man in a blue jumpsuit pushes a wheelbarrow full of prosthetic limbs across the yard.
You’re not football fans by any chance, are you?
Björk grabs the bag of chips out of his hands.
(Hissing) If you need to snack, we have free-trade soy chips in the pantry. (To Frank and Cindy) Hi! I’m Björk! But I find that Americans have a lot of trouble with the umlaut, so you can just call me Bee.
CINDY
(Riiiight) Nice to … meet you both.
Sparks fly through the air behind her. One of the workmen lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Frank and Cindy’s expressions remain frozen in place.
(Smiling beatifically) It is, isn’t it?
Off the inevitable explosion from the front yard …
EXT. BARNEY HOUSE – MOMENTS LATER
Frank and Cindy hurry down the front walk. Björk and Matthew Barney stand in the doorway; she waves happily after them as he upends the rest of the Tostitos into his mouth.
Frank – who are those people?
A man runs across the yard behind them, trailing smoke and flame. He is followed by four other men with water buckets – all in identical jumpsuits. A red-headed satyr in a suit tap-dances after them.
(Ignoring all this) I have no idea. I bet they’re from Brooklyn.
All of a sudden, their legs fly out from under them.
Frank and Cindy, lying on their backs in a pool of Vaseline. In the distance, a siren wails.
That’s it. We have to get rid of them. (Beat) Just as soon as I regain feeling in my legs.
Off her paralysis …
ACT TWO
FADE IN:
EXT. BARNEY HOUSE – AFTERNOON
The workers are back in action, hammering and sawing away on the front lawn. The injured man is bandaged head to toe and is sitting to the side, sorting through a pile of broken telephones.
INT. SANDERSON HOUSE – LIVING ROOM – CONTINUOUS
Frank is peering through the curtains, Gladys Kravitz-style. Cindy is in a wheelchair, struggling with a pair of binoculars.
(Testily) Do you really need those?
CINDY
I can’t exactly press my face against the window, Frank.
FRANK
It’s across the street, Cindy!
CINDY
I’m in a wheelchair, Frank!
A moment of sympathy for Cindy.
Cindy, that was my mother’s wheelchair. (Beat) She died in that wheelchair.
A moment of sympathy for Frank's mom.
Now stop playing and help me plan.
Cindy rolls her eyes, but relents and walks over to the window.
(Satisfied) That’s better. Now, what’s first?
Off their scheming …
MONTAGE
A) Frank sits in his car and revs the engine. He is pointed directly at the Barney House. He revs his engine some more, because what else do you do in this situation? Then, he puts the car into gear, releases the parking break, and throws himself out the door as the car hurtles toward the house. It crashes right through the front porch and bursts into flame. Björk and Matthew Barney run out of the house as Frank and Cindy watch, delighted, from the safety of their living room. They nod to one another. But, then, Matthew Barney reaches under his shirt and pulls out a coach’s whistle. He blows on the whistle three times in rapid succession and, out of nowhere, his workmen appear, each one carrying a child-size bumper car. They all hop in and drive their tiny cars into the burning vehicle while Matthew Barney builds a replica of the Chrysler Building out of mud.
B) Frank and Cindy find a group of very dangerous-looking gang-type people. Frank and Cindy hand them a wad of bills and point them in the direction of the Barney House. Cindy presses a lead pipe into one man’s hand. The gang-type people crash through Matthew Barney’s front door and there is a tremendous clamor from inside the house. Chairs and tables and vases come crashing out the front windows. Frank and Cindy shake hands, seemingly victorious, but then, without warning, the noise stops. There is the sound of distant laughter. And … of 1940s swing music. They look at each other nervously. After a moment, the hired thugs emerge, in full Busby Berkeley regalia. They join Björk and Matthew Barney in a kick-line out in front of the house.
C) Frank and Cindy acquire a tremendously large jar of angry, swarming bees. They creep up to the house and feed a rubber tube through a gap in the boards that now cover what used to be the front windows. They attach the other end of the tube to the bee-jar. The bees fly out of the jar and into the house and Frank and Cindy retreat to their yard, where they wait expectantly. Nothing happens. Several minutes later, Norman Mailer walks out, looking extremely pleased with himself.
Off this last, embarrassing failure …
FRANK AND CINDY, THEIR FACES ILLUMINATED BY CANDLE LIGHT.
Ready, Frank?
FRANK
Ready, Cindy.
They pull up the hoods on the sinister black cloaks that we just now see they are wearing as we …
EXT. BARNEY HOUSE – NIGHT
Frank and Cindy are on the front lawn, surrounded by the detritus of their previous efforts. They stand before a pentagram that they have lined out in a thick red liquid. Candles mark the vertices. They step together into the circle, clasp hands, and begin to chant. Just as the pentagram begins to glow ominously …
The porch lights come on. Or, one does, at least. The other just sort of sputters.
Matthew Barney and Björk step outside. Matthew Barney is dressed as a cowboy. Björk is dressed as a penguin.
Frank? Cindy? Is that you?
Frank and Cindy jump apart and the pentagram flickers out.
(Guiltily) Oh, um, yes. It’s us. Hi there, Matthew Barney. (After a moment, bashfully) Hi, Bee.
Björk flaps her arms in greeting.
What are you guys doing out here?
Frank shoots a desperate look at Cindy. She shrugs.
Nothing! We’re doing nothing at all!
BJÖRK
What are all those candles for?
MATTHEW BARNEY
And is that a deer?
A HEART-BREAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL DOE, tethered to a lamppost. On its side, in Sharpie, is a crudely drawn target and the words “Slice here.”
We can explain!
Matthew Barney and Björk look at Frank, then Cindy, then the pentagram, then the deer. You can practically see the light bulbs flashing over their heads.
(Shocked) Oh my goodness!
MATTHEW BARNEY
(Gesturing to the ruined front yard) You mean … the two of you have been behind all this?
FRANK AND CINDY
(After a moment, ashamed) We have.
Matthew Barney and Björk look at each other. He shakes his head in disbelief.
We had no idea.
Their faces split into megawatt grins.
(Striding forward to clap Frank on the shoulder in a manly way) Why didn’t you tell us before? Where did you study, anyway?
CINDY
(Totally confused now) I’m sorry?
MATTHEW BARNEY
RISD? Yale? CalArts?
FRANK
I … went to Wharton.
CINDY
I went to Wellesley.
MATTHEW BARNEY
(Astonished beat) You’re not even trained? Well, color me impressed, my friends. This is outstanding work – just outstanding!
Frank and Cindy’s jaws drop straight through to China.
I … I don’t understand.
MATTHEW BARNEY (CONT’D)
And living across from us this whole time. Who’d have thought!
CINDY
But … but …
MATTHEW BARNEY (CONT’D)
Have you ever thought about collaborating?
Matthew Barney and Björk lean forward expectantly as Frank and Cindy realize, for the first time, exactly what they’re up against. Their shoulders slump as one.
(Pulling it out of his you-know-what) We … don’t think our … artistic … program is refined enough for collaboration quite yet.
Matthew Barney and Björk nod in profound understanding.
(Weakly) But like we said: welcome to the neighborhood.
Matthew Barney and Björk rush forward and envelop Frank and Cindy in a huge group hug.
Off Frank and Cindy’s strained capitulation …
TAG
INT. BARNEY HOUSE – BEDROOM – NIGHT
Björk and Matthew Barney, lying in bed, cuddling. Björk clutches the toy whale to her chest. They are content. Just as the lead couple always should be at the end of the show, particularly if we want to instill our children with the right kind of family values. Which, ABC Family, I assure you I do.
(Happily) What clever neighbors. I’m so glad we left the city, pumpkin.
MATTHEW BARNEY
(On a sigh) Me too, Bee. This place is brilliant. (To himself) I wonder if they’ll let me build a football stadium in the cul-de-sac …
BJÖRK
(Giggling) I do love you, Matthew Barney.
MATTHEW BARNEY
And I love you, Björk Guðmundsdóttir.
After a long, blissful moment:
Sweetie?
MATTHEW BARNEY
Yes, dear?
She reaches beneath her pillow and pulls out a camcorder and a paring knife.
(Adorably) Can we cut up each other’s feet now?
MATTHEW BARNEY
(Just as adorably) I thought you’d never ask.
as per george lucas, disappointment and lazy writing come in threes; or, why last night's television can go to hell
I. Despair
Last night the Canadian Olympic hockey team lost in the quarter-finals. Now, this might not seem like a big deal to most people, but most people aren't the lone American offshoot of an otherwise rabidly Canadian family.
My father - a man who, as far as I know, has never once in his entire life shed a single tear, and if he has it was probably strategic - sent me the following email:
Hey kid,
Much sadness in Mudville.
Be happy,
Dad
Let me put this in a way that Americans can understand. Imagine how you would feel if Sasha Cohen were to self-destruct so spectacularly that she ruined not only her own chances at Olympic Gold, but also those of the entire country.
In perpetuity.
Basically, the entire population of Canada just got kicked in the puppy. I hope you're happy, Russia.
II. Dismay
Me: We'd better get some goddamn answers on Lost tonight or I am going to fucking track down the showrunners and knee-cap them.
Leigh: Lost isn't new.
Me: What? WHAT?
Leigh: At least that's what my TiVo says.
Me: That's not what my ... well, fuck. Now I'm definitely knee-capping them.
III. Disbelief
For the love of God, why:
Was it a conditioning problem? A bang issue? What, were you just too beautiful before? Well, I hope you're proud of yourself, Daniel V. You've just deprived the world of one of its greatest heads of hair. I'm afraid I now have no choice but to back Santino.
televangelism
I have a habit of being a bit pushy about my pop-culture consumption. I'm the sort of person who's always pressing DVDs and books into the slightly exasperated hands of my houseguests. I complain loudly about the things I don't like and I carry on breathlessly about the things I do. Even worse, I follow up on my recommendations:
"I swear to God, you'll like Firefly. Seriously. Yes, I know it's a space-western, and I agree that that's moronic, but it's so much better than you think. Please, just try it. Don't make me call you again."
"Just read the Robertson Davies book already - he's Canadian! If you reject him, you're also rejecting me and my family. Don't make me make my uncles call you again."
"Hey, have you watched Bedazzled yet? What? You didn't ... you didn't like it? Was ... was Elizabeth Hurley in the one you watched? Well, that's the remake, you idiot. I don't know why I fucking bother."
It can't be fun for the people who know me.
I mean well, though. It's not often that I discover something that brings me joy - I just want to share it, goddammit. Is it so hard to believe that some part of me is thoughtful and generous? The way some people feel about God, I feel about G.O.B. If you listen to them, sure, you might have a chance at heaven, but if you'd listened to me, your Monday nights would have been a hell of a lot more entertaining.
For the most part, my efforts are successful. Whether that is due to consideration and good taste or brute persistence, though, I couldn't say. However, to be perfectly honest, I never thought that I would be able to sway my most pop-culturally disinclined friend: my roommate.
Alison and I met in college, back when I was still toiling away as an overworked and perpetually put-upon set designer. Alison was a photography major and lighting designer, and we collaborated on a summer season that consisted of three shows of wildly varying quality, during which she was kind enough not to murder me.
We also lived together, in a building that was, as far as I can tell, a lot like Sigourney Weaver's apartment building in Ghostbusters. Except instead of conducting paranormal energy, this building conducted anger. (Also, if I'm not mistaken, heat. I spent more than one night sprawled in front of my open mini-fridge, trying desperately to lower my body temperature. It didn't work.) Now, I'm always angry, so I wasn't particularly affected. My emails might have been a bit more strongly worded than usual, but people have come to expect graceless criticism from me, so it was no skin off my back. But Alison is one of the most even-tempered and non-confrontational people I have ever known. (Among my acquaintances who aren't on powerful anti-psychotics, that is.) All the same, Alison nearly lost her mind and pitched a really impressive fit one day when a director suggested not lighting a climactic moment. He thought it would be powerful. She thought that it would look like the board op fucked up. She was right.
Anyway, we got along beautifully, but we parted ways after that summer. A year later each of us had come to the same, horrifying conclusion. She was going to go into professional lighting design. I was going to go into professional self-humiliation. There was no other choice: we were going to have to move to New York. So we decided to live together. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Until I brought up the issue of what cable package we should get.
"Well," she said delicately, "I don't think I'm in desperate need of cable. I don't really watch television."
A bleak vision of my future flashed before my eyes, a future in which I was denied regular access to reruns of Roseanne and new episodes of Six Feet Under, a future that didn't include overwhelmingly comprehensive March Madness coverage or Lifetime movies of the week or overbudgeted HBO miniseries. It wasn't a future I wanted any part of. So I decided to foot the cost of the cable bill. And because I didn't want Alison to seethe with resentment every time I turned on the television, I also decided to get her hooked on the stuff.
But it wasn't going to be easy. Alison was raised in a liberal, arts-loving home in liberal, arts-loving Evanston, IL. She and her family spent a lot of time at museums, the symphony, the ballet. She has a membership at the Met, has an extraordinary eye for modern photography, and can discuss quite passionately her love of theatre. She is the one with the subscription to the New Yorker. She is, no doubt about it, one cultured lady.
The problem with these high-culture types, though, is that high cultural production is often served with a side of anti-low-culture propaganda. Those fancy cultural institutions - museums, the symphony, the ballet - they still depend on the same damn thing as the rest of us less-fancy types: money. And money spent on Netflix and TiVo is money that could be spent on donations and ticket sales, so of course they're going to encourage people to place an intellectual premium on their work. It was neither surprising nor entirely unforgivable that Alison would give TV the proverbial stink-eye. It was, however, unacceptable.
So I came at her with my best: Buffy.
We started off slow. I showed her a classic episode from Season 3 - Doppelgangland, where a vampire version of Willow shows up and much wackiness ensues - and whispered at her throughout: "Did you know that this show has a strong academic following? There have been colloquia about Buffy. Joss Whedon is knowledgeable in the rudiments of feminist theory and musical composition. And isn't Seth Green strangely attractive?" Soon we had a plan to watch the entire series from the beginning, and I knew that I was making progress when she went home once and told me afterwards that she'd had to exert enormous willpower not to go out and rent the third season finale.
I introduced her to the best of reality television: The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model, Project Runway. Even the most hardened of anti-television souls, I think, would find it hard to resist Phil Keoghan and Tim Gunn. She started debating with her mother and sister about the merits of reality programming and planned evenings around highly anticipated episodes.
Of course, it hasn't always been easy. There was the time I was watching Soul Plane, for example, and I thought Alison was going to throw my TV out the window. Or the time I decided to record EGG in order to prove that television could do stuffy fine arts, too - only to discover, two days later, that my DVR had deleted a pivotal episode of The O.C. to make room for fucking eighteen episodes of EGG. I didn't even know there were eighteen episodes of EGG.
But last night made it all worthwhile. I was sitting in the living room, the television uncharacteristically silent as I hacked away at another hopeless writing project. All of a sudden, Alison looked up from her book and said "Are you planning on watching anything?" I didn't respond - honestly, I had no idea where she was going with this. "Because, well, I was wondering if maybe I could watch Alias?" I nodded dumbly and watched as she went to the DVD player and inserted a disc from the season 1 set. A set that I do not own. A set that she went out and rented by herself without even a word of suggestion from me.
I nearly wept. And, for a brief moment, felt an alarming kinship with Jerry Falwell and L. Ron Hubbard.
Like, oh, so that's why they do it. 
Of course, I'm not going to feel so great about this once Alison gets to Alias's third season and has all of her tender television hopes and dreams shattered by some seriously crap writing. But until then, I'm just going to enjoy the moment.
And, maybe, consider asking Alison to pitch in on the cable bill.
how to be alone
The past two weekends I've been a very well-behaved Elizabeth. I dressed up in my girl clothes and I played nice with the other kids. I made stuffing, I mashed potatoes, I washed approximately nine thousand dishes. I didn't lose my temper when the airline misplaced my suitcase on my flight back to New York after Thanksgiving. Or when they misentered my name on my boarding pass. Or when they lost my seat assignment at the gate. Or when they ran out of bourbon on the plane.
No. I spent a week and a half being a perfectly reasonable and almost charming example of humanity. Honestly, I'm surprised I had it in me.
Which is why I felt perfectly justified this weekend in telling the world at large to fuck off and die while I holed up in my apartment and watched approximately twenty-two hours of Veronica Mars, a show so good it almost makes me want to go back to high school and do it all over again, Kristen Bell-style.
Seriously: how awesome would a misanthropic 6'1" girl detective have been? Way awesomer than a misanthropic 5'1" girl detective, that's for sure. I'm so conspicuous that I'd be inconspicuous. (Although I made this same argument when I applied to the CIA, and they didn't quite seem to buy it.)
(I also choose to believe that they rejected me on the basis of my association with dangerous subversive groups.)
(i.e., Canada.)
Here's the complete list of alternate careers I am considering for when I finally lose my patience with the daily humiliation I endure as a low-level media minion:
1. Girl Detective
2. Femme Fatale
3. Miss Tall International
4. Vampire Slayer
5. Cab Driver
Now, I'm probably most qualified for #3, as I meet the standards not only for Tall Clubs International (5'10") but also for the elite California TipToppers (6'0"). I'm an aggressive and maniacally unforgiving driver, so #5 is a strong possibility. 1, 2, and 4 might be more difficult from a practical standpoint, but I'm sure my affinity for dark eyeliner and cult television will give me a leg up.
But the real reason I'd be inordinately well-suited to any of these jobs and the real reason I love the idea of any of these jobs is simple: all of those girls get to work alone.
Because I prefer to be alone. And when I can't be alone, I prefer to be aloof. It's why I'll happily blow off weekend plans to gorge on Indian take-out and teen drama. It's why this city is, day by day, driving me a little bit crazy. And it's why I fantasize about spending my days stuck in rush-hour traffic, making minimal conversation and next-to-nothing tips.
Like most everything else, I'm pretty sure my parents are to blame. I couldn't help but turn out this way: I'm a only child. (I have yet to pin down the precise reason for this. My mother claims that they realized fairly early on that they needed to outnumber the children or else they'd have no hope of survival; my father claims that he was sure that, had I been the eldest instead of the only, I would have gone evil. Both of these statements ring true.) As a result, I spent a large portion of my childhood happily keeping my own company. It's what I know best and it's what I like best, dammit.
Annoyingly, though, people don't seem to get this. A close friend told me that I have "intimacy issues." My mother claims that I "have no tolerance for human weakness." A boy I knew once called me "a callous bitch." All this because of my tendency to bail on dinner plans in order to investigate the offerings on HBO OnDemand. But it's not about hating people, people. It's just about liking their absence better.
I'm not a hermit or a social maladjust: I have friends and loved ones, acquaintances and mortal enemies. I don't sit at home concocting nefarious anarchist schemes or writing Family Matters fanfiction. I give good chat if you make me, and if I'm under duress - or, well, drunk - I can be downright lively. And if you look hard enough, you'll probably find people who can corroborate this.
That's right: I'm not a loser by circumstance - I'm a loser by choice.
So I'm going to quit trying to justify my behavior to people who are never going to understand and focus instead on more important matters. Like whether or not Veronica's going to come to her senses and suck face with Logan again already.
Because no matter what you think of prime-time programming, it's a hell of a lot healthier to worry about televised melodrama than it is to worry about what other people think. If people spent more time alone maybe they'd understand that.
live blogging the live west wing debate
8:00pm
Here we go. So Ellen Degeneres is hosting or something? Does the West Wing normally have a host or is this a special thing? I already don’t know what’s going on. I didn't expect that to happen for at least another 10 minutes.
8:01pm
The embarrassment of stunt television has set in for me. "Terrified doesn’t begin to describe it." Well, yes.
8:03pm
Somebody must have something on Forrest Sawyer, because they've managed to coerce him into moderating this monstrosity. He's going over the rules. At length. I'm not sure if they're trying to make the point that the rules for presidential debate are absurd or if they're just trying to reduce the amount of time that Jimmy Smits will have to trip up his lines.
8:04pm
Alda just clammed up ... is that our first live trip-up? Oh, psyche! That was just acting, kids. Learn from the master.
8:05pm
“I suspect the audience will reward brevity.”
8:06pm
Credits. Thank God. You know, I read that President Bush has been trying to kick back lately by watching reruns of The West Wing. The administration should really be earning residuals on Daily Show earnings. They just make it so easy.
8:09pm
Ellen is back and rambling about Social Security cards. I actually have to agree on this one - those cards really could use some lamination. I also have a feeling that's the only sensible thing I'm going to hear for the next hour.
8:10pm
Look - they’re throwing out the rules to the debate! Those crazy, subversive kids. If they'll go live, they'll do anything.
8:11pm
Wait, what’s that – a severe thunderstorm warning is in effect? Is that part of the show? Is that for real? I can’t tell: THE META IS JUST TOO MUCH.
8:12pm
Oh no, Smits just fucked up provisions! He said “provishions” instead! Can you believe that? Live TV is AWESOME.
8:14pm
They're talking about CAFTA. It's ... exactly as boring as you would expect.
8:18pm
Alda is wiping the floor with Smits. But I gotta say that in a cage fight, I'm pretty sure Bobby Simone would kick Hawkeye's ass.
8:19pm
Please don't get into vouchers. Please don't go there. Oh, hell. The left side of my body just fell asleep.
8:20pm
"Head Start doesn’t work," says Alda. The audience just made an awesome "Oh no, he didn't" sort of noise. Which makes me wonder: who the fuck has the bad luck to be cast in the live audience? If I were an actor, that's precisely the shitty stuff I'd get stuck doing. Sometimes I'm glad I'm so lacking in talent. And natural beauty. And ... artificial beauty.
8:21pm
In an honestly unexpected turn of events, I find myself agreeing with the Republican. Just another item on the long list of annoying things about this stuntisode.
8:23pm
Can we have another commercial? Please? I’m dying here. The whole country is dying here.
8:27pm
Is Medicare really the most efficient health care system in the world? I might stop to google that if I weren't too busy lancing the boil of my persistent bitterness - which is nothing new, really, except that now it's LIVE.
8:28pm
They’ve come out from behind the podiums. Just how many envelopes are they going to push tonight! John Wells, you fox.
8:29pm
Alda just dissed Canada. And just when I was starting to like him.
8:33pm
Commercials. THANK GOD. I’m getting a beer.
8:35pm
Medium 3-D? Oh come on. It's only a matter of time, isn't it, before NBC gives up and just starts paying people to watch its shows.
8:37pm
God, it's back already. I get that they wanted to be realistic or whatever, but maybe the show-runners should have thought twice before being realistic about something that is in actuality mind-numbingly dull. We don't watch real presidential debates to be entertained, we watch out of fear.
8:38pm
They’re talking economics now. Now, I love economics but I'm still trying to eat my own face at the moment. WHO, EXACTLY, THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?
8:41pm
Smits just tripped up again. This is fucking incredible television, let me tell you.
8:44pm
16 more minutes. This was the worst blog entry idea ever.
8:47pm
And now they’re getting all up in each other’s faces about global warming. Oh, for the love of all that's holy, please let now be the time for that cage match. KILL HIM, HAWKEYE.
8:48pm
No cage match. This sucks.
8:49pm
“We’re running out of time.” That's the best thing I've heard all night.
8:50pm
“It’s ridiculous to suggest that we would ever have to go to war to protect our oil supply.” And that's the most depressing thing I've heard all night.
8:51pm
Closing statements, Round 1: Jimmy. Is he tearing up? Christ, I know I am.
8:54pm
Closing statements, Round 2: Alda. “Do we want more government or do we want to get controol of governement?” Oh, did I just type "controol"? I meant "control"! I guess that's the risk - and reward - of live blogging!
8:56pm
And now they have the fake families up with the fake candidates. And we are fake out.
8:57pm
“Wow, that was exciting!” Ellen takes the sarcasm right out of my mouth. Or she would, if I hadn't just used it all up. God, I feel cheap.
lost
Okay. So I was wrong. Really wrong. And was probably just being stubbornly contrary.
Lost is crack, heroin, and MSG, all mixed up and in broadcast form.
And Naveen Andrews is just ... absurdly hot. In the Ben Kingsley tradition of catch-all ethnic casting, the dude plays an Iraqi, which should be ridiciulous enough to distract me from the man's wonderous physical beauty.
But, I mean, really, Indian, Iraqi, Italian, who the fuck cares: just look at that. It's almost enough to make a girl want to rewatch The English Patient.
Oh, I could write anything here, it wouldn't matter. All you're looking at is the picture.
Just ... carry on.
possibly the single greatest television moment of my life
God bless you, Albert Pujols. That was fucking beautiful.
and the award goes to
James Spader?
Patricia Arquette??
Everybody Loves Raymond?!
EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND?!!!
Well. Sure. Why the fuck not?
Fucking idiots.
all the world's a montage
God bless Fox. For years the network has incurred the wrath of large portions of its audience by waiting until after the World Series to premiere its prime-time line-up. I guess that when you consider Fox's overall audience share this hasn't necessarily been the worst sort of public bad, but for anyone who was as devoted to the X-Files as I was, waiting until November for a David Duchovny fix was unremitting torture.
This season, though, new episodes of some of my favorite shows are already up and running and providing a much-needed distraction from my growing suspicion that we're only a few CO2 emissions away from a real-life The Day After Tomorrow.
Last night Bones and House premiered. Rather surprisingly, Bones wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. David Boreanaz deserves particular mention for only hitting a 4 on the bad-acting scale. (Which, by the way, I'm pretty sure runs from 1 to David Boreanaz.) And House was, as always, a tight if formulaic hour of television. I would happily watch Hugh Laurie watch paint dry, so it's hard for House to do wrong by me.
Both shows, however, showed a profound and surprisingly upsetting musical incompetence.
Musically, House is usually quite strong - hell, it uses Massive Attack to great effect in the opening credits, the very sequence that first incited an incipient flutter of affection in my jaded, television-viewing heart. But somebody made the lazy and borderline offensive choice to use Jeff Buckley's cover of Hallelujah in last night's closing montage. This begs the question: why hasn't somebody called an industry-wide moratorium on this song yet? The only instance that I can possibly imagine it ever being effective again is if the folks at Arrested Development appropriate it. That, I might cherish. Otherwise, I never again need to hear the following phrases issuing angstily from my television:
1. the minor fall and the major lift
2. her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
3. love is not a victory march
4. halleluu ... uuuuuu ... jaah (you know the one I mean)
There are dozens of other depresso songs that would have worked equally well and that haven't already been used ad nauseum. Hell, there are dozens of other depresso songs by Jeff Buckley alone, not to mention by Leonard Cohen if the music coordinator wanted to get all crazy-like. A really great, effective montage succeeds because it manages to wed a unique dramatic moment to a unique and compatible musical moment. If the music is cliched or overexposed, it just doesn't work.
For instance, every time I hear Full of Grace, I am immediately reminded of the second season finale of Buffy, in which we saw Buffy's tender little Slayer heart all smashed to tiny Chosen pieces. The emotional memory of the scene magnifies my emotional response to the song to the point that I forget that I should really be embarrassed to be listening to Sarah McLachlan, much less enjoying it. But if that same song had also been used on the West Wing and ER and Friends and Frasier, the connection wouldn't be nearly as strong, because I'd be remembering several different scenes and several different purposes. And, no doubt, I'd also be thinking, as I was during House last night, "Not this fucking song again."
Bones failed on another front. In this case, I hadn't heard the songs at all before. Its two painfully bad contemplation-set-to-poignant-pop sequences were set to Thirteen Senses, which seems to have built a moderate fan base by sounding exactly like Coldplay, and Howie Day, whose vocals reminded me rather unpleasantly of a male Natalie Imbruglia. Apparently, plenty of viewers enjoyed these songs - enough, at least, to post about them on the Fox message boards where I dug up the information. Now, I didn't cringe at the music in Bones because I didn't like it. (Although let's be clear on this: I didn't.) The reason the montage in Bones was so laughably bad was because they tried to use music as a substitute for emotion instead of as an intensifier. The song-scene pairings were as contrived as the sexual tension between Bones and Boreanaz - that is to say, unbearably so.
A great montage needs to achieve a sort of audiovisual symbiosis: for better or for worse, the music needs to match the moment and vice versa.
The closing music in the finale of Six Feet Under was a monumentally sappy song called "Breathe Me". It's sort of the musical equivalent of Love Story, engineered for unabashed sadness and vague embarrassment. And the writers were keenly aware of this fact - the deeply unhip nature of the song was practically a subplot. But when played in the closing scenes, the music gained a depth beyond its superficial sap, and the glib velocity of the montage was grounded in something that felt more real.
The ingredients seem simple enough. A poignant circumstance. Somebody, somewhere, staring off into the distance. Add some sidelight, a few languid close-ups, a song in a minor key and voila: five minutes of compelling filler without the need for silly old dialogue. But it's not that simple. You just can't fake good montage.
Although, god help us all, I'm sure they'll keep trying. As excited as I am about the new Fox schedule, I should have prepared myself for at least some disappointment. September, November, May - it doesn't matter. Death and taxes and lazy writing: there's never any convenient time for any of them.