Judgment Call

Why do we always come here? I guess we'll never know.

2011-11-26T15:39:00.003-05:00

The Muppets have been so overexposed leading up to the release of the new movie that even I'm a little sick of them now! The last straw for me may have been the in-flight magazine cover story that included an "interview" with "Kermit." So I don't really want to add to the glut, but I have thoughts about The Muppets and - surprise! - they're a little contrary.

Obviously, I was looking forward to this movie. The trailer made me tear up. I like Jason Segel, and his approach to things seemed solid. The SNL appearance made me laugh (which is saying something for SNL). All the critics I follow really liked it. I was all excited and had every expectation that I would love this movie.

And it was…fine.

I had a perfectly lovely time. It was cute. I thought they were respectful of the characters and of Jim Henson's legacy and all that. The tone was right, the replacement voices were pretty good. Walter was adorable, and Segel (who I've also been getting pretty sick of lately thanks to the film's publicity push) and Adams were great. It was nice to see old friends back together again and I felt joy at that. But it didn't add up to much for me.

I hate when people accuse adult Muppet fans of only being into the hipster nostalgia of it. It's not just nostalgia. I love the Muppets more as an adult than I ever did as a kid, and have discovered wonderful things Jim Henson did before I was born. I've revisited plenty of things I loved as a child that don't hold up at all (including things by Jim Henson - I couldn't make it through a whole episode of Fraggle Rock). I've never been accused of loving Ghostbusters or Star Wars purely out of nostalgia.

So what left me cold about The Muppets was that it was all nostalgia. The movie relied entirely on our past relationships to these characters, and our fond memories of jokes and songs to bring meaning to the proceedings. You can watch any of the three original Muppet movies without ever having seen a Muppet before; they stand completely alone, ready to tell their own stories with actors who happen to be made of felt. This movie is entirely dependent on the audience knowing the characters going in, and in fact the plot is built around that fandom. That's not the same as including winking references (no matter how good, and some of the more meta ones especially were very good) in your reboot. The entire movie is a winking reference. In a way, it felt like one of those superhero origin movies where nothing really happens and you know it's all there just to set up a sequel.

It probably doesn't help that I just re-watched A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, a 2003 TV movie that's also clearly pitched to adults (its big showpieces are a nearly perfect Moulin Rouge parody, and an alternate Kermit-less universe in which Piggy is a crazy cat lady phone psychic and Scooter is a go-go dancer) but that also manages to have its own completely stand-alone story, even while being basically a direct sequel to The Muppet Movie. It also has basically the exact same beats of the bad guy exploiting a bad contract to take over the theater, and Kermit being a total sad-sack about it as The Muppets. I guess it's not a fan favorite but I happen to love Very Merry Muppet Christmas, in part for its archness and barely controlled anarchy (very true to the original spirit) and willingness to push the edge of the characters a little, so having it fresh in my mind didn't help The Muppets feel any fresher.

I want to be clear that I didn't hate the movie. I know a lot of my "meh" reaction to it is about poorly managed expectations, the squirming toddler sitting in front of me, and probably also this nasty head cold I'm getting over. I'll watch it again on DVD and maybe change my mind. It is good to have the Muppets back, and there were plenty of things I liked. There were lots of good jokes that felt very Muppety, which I won't spoil here for people who haven't seen it yet. I enjoyed seeing old favorite characters even if they didn't really belong there (talking to you, Marvin Suggs). The songs were cute and "Rainbow Connection" never fails to make me a little misty in any context.

What I liked most was the way the world of the movie treated the Muppets so nonchalantly. My favorite Muppet Show episodes are ones where the guest star behaves as if the Muppets are completely ordinary, where requesting a 6-foot-tall talking parrot to sing Gilbert and Sullivan with you is a normal and expected thing to do, at least at this theater. In The MuppetsGary can throw Walter over the fence. He'd presumably never try that with Mary, even if she asked. Fozzie can play in a lounge in Reno and Gonzo can run a company (complete with chicken secretary) and nobody bats an eye. The Muppets feel real because they are real, which is why I'm such a sucker for puppetry in general. If there was a modern special effect in this movie, I couldn't spot it, and being in that fully-created world gave the movie a lot of charm.

Just not enough charm. The whole thing felt too packaged to me, too carefully crafted to push those memory buttons. I don't fully believe that you can't have the Muppets without Jim Henson and Frank Oz, but so much of the joy of their work is the looseness of it, the way they play off of each other in this completely natural way, even as they crouch unnaturally under the furniture. One of my favorite things is this blooper reel from Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, in which the puppets break character but the puppeteers (Oz and Jerry Nelson) never do. You'd think they'd want to lower their arms! But you get the sense that they could do this all day, and that the puppets really are an extension of them. I think that's why replacing that original cast, at least to play the old characters, never quite works. It's not just like seeing a new actor play James Bond. It's like if Daniel Craig somehow took over Sean Connery's body. But I digress…my point is that the original Muppet team, both in front of and behind the camera, had a chemistry that plenty of modern ensembles have, but that this movie lacked. It felt too by-the-numbers, too "Ready, 30-somethings? LAUGH!" for me to completely give in to it emotionally, even as I DID laugh. It was a bit like watching a Muppet tribute band, which, given a major plot point in the film, was kind of ironic.

It's worth noting that I saw The Muppets with two actual children - Boy's nieces, aged 11 and 6 - who liked the movie a lot, despite never having seen The Muppet Show. So maybe I'm totally off base. I wonder how much of it they got, but they have favorite Muppets now (Animal and Miss Piggy, respectively), and I can only take that as a good thing. I will happily sit them down for a classic Muppet marathon at any time…if I can get them to turn off iCarly and Spongebob for more than five seconds.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Documentary Edition

2011-10-23T19:29:00.000-04:00

Things have been busy and I haven't been able to do much writing lately. I stopped right in the middle of the new TV season! I'll get back to that soon, I hope. But look! A new Netflix Queue Challenge post! I actually watched three movies in one week! All of them were documentaries, which is strange because I don't watch a lot of documentaries. One was a fluke, and there were external factors behind the other two.

Starwoids
I don't really know what made me put this in my queue at all, let alone move it to the top. I think it came up in a post somewhere about the Star Wars musical which if you, like me, happen to fit in that Venn diagram overlap of Star Wars nerds and musical theatre nerds, is very funny and charming. Starwoids is neither. It follows a group of nerds (no other way to say it, really; "fans" doesn't cut it) waiting in line first to buy tickets and then to get seats for the first showing of Episode I in Hollywood. While I can appreciate their fandom, I mostly just feel sad for these people. Don't they have anything better to do? I mean, I also saw Episode I on opening night, but I ordered my tickets over the phone and got there maybe an hour early for seats. Also, sitting on the sidewalk for weeks is pretty boring to watch. There are some fun diversions to conventions, and the aforementioned musical, but it's mostly a slog. What kept me watching was anticipating the payoff at the end, when the thing these guys had been waiting for for so long turned out to be a crushing disappointment. But that never happened! They loved the movie! They even check in with them a couple months later and these guys have no regrets. The schadenfreude was half the reason I watched the damn documentary! So very disappointing.

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
This isn't actually available on Netflix yet, but I'm counting it because it was in my saved queue. I wound up at a screening of this on Monday night. Obviously this is a movie I would be into. But even if you don't care at all about the Muppets, you should see this movie.

Elmo became the most popular thing in the world long after I stopped watching Sesame Street, and I've always found him incredibly annoying, with his falsetto voice and his referring to himself in the third person and his seeming maybe a little bit stupid and his supplanting Grover as everyone's favorite monster. But even my cold black heart couldn't watch this film cynically. Seeing Elmo with Make-A-Wish kids whose dying wish was to meet him? Watching children interact with Elmo as if he were real, even though there is a large man standing right there with a hand up his butt? It is impossible to stay cynical.

Near the beginning of the movie someone (Frank Oz, maybe?) says "In a good puppet you can see the soul of the puppeteer." So to watch Kevin Clash grow up with this incredible creativity and love of this strange hobby-turned-career, channeling his shyness through puppets, and ultimately creating this insanely popular character on a fluke, is really quite moving. "Elmo is love," someone says, and it's really kind of hard not to like him after that. Also helpful: The handful of outtakes where Elmo gets a little dark. Elmo is love, and also just a bit of Kevin Clash's id.

Without ever getting too explicit about it, this is kind of a movie about the power of arts education, supportive parenting, and mentoring. This kid had an obscure hobby that most people - especially poor people - would never even consider could become a career. He was surrounded by people who let him run with it and professionals who helped him along, and it made him a millionaire. I found that deeply inspiring, and easily applicable to just about any artistic endeavor.

After the screening there was a panel with the actors who play Gordon and Maria (still on the show!), Kevin Clash, and two other Muppeteers, including Fran Brill, who's been around since The Muppet Show. Fran brought Prairie Dawn with her, so we knew she was old school. A woman around my age asked a question about how the show had changed over the years, and she prefaced it with, "I didn't grow up with Elmo, but I remember Prairie Dawn," and without missing a beat Prairie Dawn said "I remember you too," and the whole room kind of melted. At another point in the Q&A, Murray (the other monster on the panel) said something that made Kevin Clash crack up, and while he was unable to speak Elmo turned and looked at him expectantly. Yes, I realize that Elmo doesn't "do" anything, but it was clearly an unconscious move on Clash's part and it really felt like he had a life of his own in that moment. They're all incredibly gifted improv actors too, and watching them work a crowd of adults with those characters was really lovely.

Anyway, the film is just opening in limited release now (Clash and Elmo are doing live appearances at some screenings), and I'm sure it will be on Netflix before long, and you should see it.

Southern Comfort
I'd known about this movie for a long time (it's ten years old) but never had much interest in watching it, until last week when I saw a musical based on it. That's a strange way to come to a documentary, but it worked for Grey Gardens too. Anyway, both the film and the play follow a makeshift family of transsexuals (mostly female-to-male) in the rural south, leading up to the Southern Comfort convention. The main "character" is dying of ovarian and cervical cancer, which would be so heavy handed in a work of fiction, but here is just treated sort of ruefully. Everyone knows that this will be his last SoCo, if he makes it at all. The film is pretty light on plot (it was interesting to see how the musical stayed insanely faithful to certain elements while taking huge liberties with - and completely inventing - others) which makes it a bit slow to watch but also gives it a real slice-of-life feeling. Given the subject and setting, that's almost radical. There's a solid 15 minutes or so at the beginning where if you didn't know what the movie was about, you'd have no idea. The men pass so well, and for a good bit after Robert's girlfriend Lola (who does not) arrives, there's still no explanation of who these people are. I'm not sure if not knowing going in would have made that confusing, or fun to discover, but I do like that it's really on the audience to catch up and figure it out. We're joining this story very much already in progress.

The film deals a lot with prejudice, not just against the transsexuals, but also the audience's prejudices against their community (perhaps I'm being prejudiced in simply making the assumption that the audience of this film is likely to be liberal). Robert and his friends deal with a lot of discrimination, but it's almost all off-screen. We're told about it, and it's heartbreaking, but we mostly only see a world of acceptance. Since my own prejudices had me prepared for nothing but small-mindedness, I was deeply touched to hear Robert's son (who doesn't exist at all in the play, which might be part of why I was surprised) say, "Had I gotten married I would have chosen Mom to be the best man at my wedding."

Fall TV, Part 1

2011-10-02T22:38:00.002-04:00

Hey, look, Cracked judged the new season the same way I did! Only much funnier!

Okay, but now we've all actually seen things, so here's a follow up post on my list of what I am was looking forward to this fall.

Ringer
I found the pilot delightfully silly, and was pleasantly surprised by how well Sarah Michelle Gellar pulled off her dual role (the styling didn't hurt — even if it at one point required her to have a completely unrealistic hairdo to indicate which twin she was). I didn't mind the painful greenscreen everyone was talking about; I was too distracted by the bizarre filter they had on the lens in the same scene. I'm much more bothered by someone getting into a cab in New York City and saying "I'm going to the airport" (hat-tip to Jenn for catching that one), or the plot hinging around an apartment being empty because they're firing the contractors — but wouldn't they have to come pick up their tools? Fantasy needs to have rules, and I'm completely fine with whatever crazy evil twin shenanigans they want to throw at us, as long as I believe in the underlying world. Obviously the show isn't meant to be realistic, but it still needs to be grounded.

Also, I just don't find it very compelling. Boy pointed out that the main character (Bridget, as Siobhan) has no real relationships with anyone, since she's pretending to have known every character on the show already, or pretending not to. It makes it hard to care about anyone.

I'm two episodes in, and I'll give it at least one more, because it clearly has potential to be trashy fun, but it needs to get more interesting and less clunky quickly.

Vampire Diaries
I've only watched the first episode of the season, but they're definitely playing to their strengths (naked Ian Somerhalder), and are staying true to form by unexpectedly killing off a character I quite liked, and generally remaining campy, over-the-top fun (a potential running theme for the season).

The Secret Circle
I've only watched the pilot so far, so I'm reserving judgment, but I'm not impressed. There's a lot of setup in the pilot, which is to be expected, but it's all pretty dull, which is avoidable. The cast so far has very little chemistry (which, again, can change over time) and aren't all that interesting individually either. I thought this show would hit my sweet spot (teen drama, supernatural, slightly silly) but so far it's pretty meh.

Archer
Soooo good! And already over! I know it will be back for more in a few months, but this three episode mini-season was such of a tease! I really want to believe that the whole cast records the show together every week, like a radio play. I know that's not how animated shows usually work, but it really has that feel to it. I've always loved how they treat the show as if it's live-action, with the opening credits with the cast and the tight continuity across episodes. But the fact that it's animated lets them get away with a lot (like everyone being awful). This arc has been great, and I hope it achieves what I assume is its goal of getting them new viewers from Sunny for the rest of the season.

How I Met Your Mother
I don't feel like I have anything insightful to say about this show, but I've quite liked the first few episodes of the season. The cast seems to be having fun, and they somehow make all the gimmickry work for me.

The Sing Off
I love this show. I can't really explain why. I know it's just another singing competition, and the fact that they're groups doesn't really change the format at all. I'm not even all that into a cappella. But I just love it. It's refreshing to have judges (two out of three anyway) who are actually giant music nerds, giving actual criticism. And Sara Bareilles is charming enough to make up for the fact that she never really says anything and I don't like her music. I love this show so much I gave up Gossip Girl for it. GG was on the cusp already, but I didn't really think I'd give it up for this. But The Sing Off started a week earlier and I'm not letting it go.

The Playboy Club
You guys, I really like The Playboy Club. I swear I'm not trying to be contrary to every critic and basically every viewer here. I'm not saying it's a good show. I recognize that it's terrible, but two episodes in I'm totally enjoying it. It's not without its problems. Chiefly that Maureen might be the dumbest person on television. They seem to be trying hard to make her a strong woman, even though she's in a Bunny costume (I assume because she's in a Bunny costume). We see her stand up to various men, and while she definitely needs help hiding the body and all that, I didn't get the sense that the man had to rescue her. But then she leaves her blood-covered costume lying around where anyone could find it, and stands in the bathroom with the door open playing with the key from the man she killed, which she supposedly has with her to get rid of. I hope the mob kills her and Laura Benanti becomes the singing, snarky lead of the show as she deserves to be.

But yeah, I'm totally enjoying this terrible show. It looks good, and there's enough going on that I'm always interested. I actually sort of like how seriously it takes itself — that makes the campy moments feel unforced. I'm sorry, everybody.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 3, Episodes 1-4

2011-09-19T22:01:00.000-04:00

Anne
One of the fun things about this rewatch is discovering that episodes I remember unfondly are actually pretty good. I don't know if that's nostalgia, or comparing the show to what's on nowadays (which I guess is nostalgia of a kind too), or just having hindsight and the big picture. Or maybe it's being older and less fickle and judgmental. (HA! No.) In any case, I remembered this season starting slowly and wobbly...ly, but actually this disc is pretty decent, showing off how nicely the writers, directors and actors have settled into the show, even if the story isn't moving so swiftly.

I remember being hugely disappointed by "Anne" originally, and that feeling definitely holds when you watch it directly after "Becoming." From a storytelling perspective, I understand how it's important to show where the characters are now after the events of last season, before bringing them back together. But if this were, say, a movie, it would be a brief prologue before getting on with it, instead of an entire week's installment that we have to wait impatiently to move on from. Fortunately, now we don't have to wait! And now I can appreciate the good here too.

I love the handling of the exposition in the opening scene, with the Scoobies trying - badly - to pick up in Buffy's absence. I love the first day of school sequence, which includes not just our heroes but a bunch of supporting players, like Gay Larry (but no Jonathan?). It's the after-school-special-ness of the runaway teen stuff that bugs. And the excess of mopey Buffy scenes. I get it, and she's certainly earned her sadness, but it's just no fun to watch. See also season six, but at least then she wasn't separated from the rest of the cast. The fun chemistry everyone else has, even while they're wallowing, is delightful.

Holy 1998!: Giles references getting a meal on a flight. Xander and Cordelia haven't been in touch all summer, which she's spent in Mexico; no email, no Facebook - though her family's rich, you'd think she could spring for an international call.

Quoterific: "If we can focus, keep discipline, and not have quite as many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule!"

Dead Man's Party
This episode is also a lot better than I remember it. The MOTW is lame but it's not actually about that at all. I love Buffy best when the characters behave like real high school students, and so many of the interactions here have that quality. Alyson Hannigan continues her MVP streak from the end of last season, with her totally believable awkwardness around Buffy, and the big group confrontation at the end is great (though I'm not sure even teenagers would be so crass as to have that fight in front of all those random people).

That's So 1998: Joyce's book club read The Deep End of the Ocean. Willow calls Buffy's house when she's running late to meet her somewhere else entirely.

Quotetastic: "It's angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room to suffer."
…and one I still use now and then: "Chock full of hoot with just a leetle bit of nanny."

Faith, Hope and Trick
Has David Boreanaz been in the opening credits all season and I just didn't notice? He's been around in dream sequences, but that seems like a bit of a giveaway, especially given how this show liked to play with the credits later on.

Anyway, Faith's first appearance is a little meh, maybe because the episode is so stuffed, with the apparent introduction of the new Big Bad (I love that fake-out, and I also enjoy Mr. Trick so much more now that I know he's not going to be around for very long), Buffy's return to school, and a gigantic dose of Willow-Oz quirky adorableness. I love that Buffy spots a vampire by his outdated clothing and dance moves, a trick from the movie. And aw, Giles. "There is no spell." The development of his fatherly relationship with Buffy is so slow, all the way through the series, and it's awesome.

It's never occurred to me before but Faith kind of makes no sense. Buffy's supposed to be an anomaly, not found and trained as a small child, raised in isolation from other people. Faith seems to have lived a pretty full life as a juvenile delinquent, before being called to slayage a few months ago when Kendra died. It makes her a great character, but it makes Buffy a little less special. Though I guess so does all of season seven.

Quotalicious: "So I told him that I loved him, and I kissed him. And I killed him."

Beauty and the Beasts
This is the weakest episode of this batch, with a repeat of "drugs are bad" plus a whole bunch of "hey, maybe don't beat women mmkay?" And worse, it's muddled. Pete's a monster all on his own…except he's not, he made potions or whatever that fucked him up. I feel like the point is that there's a vampire and a werewolf out there but the real monster is this abusive guy, and making him even a little supernatural undermines that, in a way the show rarely did. Plus, as well-drawn as the world of the high school is, with its Larrys and Jonathans, it's a pretty safe bet that if a new character is introduced and he has more than five lines, something's up. Which makes the whole "is the killer Oz or Angel" thing here pretty suspense-free.

And how did Buffy get pants on Angel?

I do love that Giles' watcher books would be listed in the card catalog. And Giles' tranquilized pratfall is, well, "right bloody priceless."

Now That's What I Call 1998: I don't know if this is actually a 90s thing but what's with all the red pants? Like primary red. Netflix red. Willow had a pair in the last episode, and Xander has them in this one. I've noticed them before on the show. Nothing against them, it just seems like A Thing.

I got nothing for quotes on this one. Yawn.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Country Strong

2011-09-13T11:10:00.001-04:00

I was so bored by this movie even the prospect of writing about it puts me to sleep. What a disappointment! I was expecting campy ridiculousness along the lines of Burlesque or Showgirls but it was all just such a downer. I guess it's a compliment that it wasn't laughably bad? But it wasn't actually good either, just self-serious and plodding. It's so badly paced and so awkwardly written, that when the big secret the movie's been hinting about for over an hour was finally revealed, I had to rewind because I missed it.

The performances are fine, I guess. It's hard to tell. I have nothing against Gwyneth and I thought she did a good job with both the acting and the singing. It was nice to see Leighton Meester doing a pretty big 180 from Gossip Girl (the only thing I've seen her in). The men were utterly bland and forgettable. I don't really care for country music, but as far as I could tell the music was well done. I especially liked how much Leighton Meester's songs sounded like Taylor Swift.

Oops, yeah, I've bored myself. It's so disappointing when a fun bad movie turns out to just be bad.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Die Hard

2011-09-12T10:54:00.001-04:00

Until last weekend I had never seen Die Hard. I'm not really sure how I missed it. I was a little too young to see it in the theater (though really exactly the right age for it in general, no matter what the MPAA thought), and like so many movies I just never got around to it later. It's definitely not the sort of movie I'd want to watch edited for television, though I don't remember ever making a conscious choice not to watch it. And it's entered the culture so thoroughly that I both feel like I've sort of seen it already, and like there's no way I wouldn't be disappointed in it.

But I wasn't! I really liked it. And I was surprised how few of the details I actually knew, and how much those details really mattered. I also had no idea how 80s it was. I mean, obviously, I knew it was made in 1988, but I mean self-consciously so. John is a fine, upstanding, hardworking, blue-collar guy, and we'll prove it by showing you other characters with every cliched signifier of yuppie douchebaggery, with the conspicuous consumption and the cocaine and the - gasp! - independent career woman. The slimy coworker could have been from The Wedding Singer. That's not a criticism, it was just a surprise. I expect these things to be more natural when they're actually of the period, but of course it's not like people living in a time aren't aware of their own cliches. I guess nowadays it would all be recession references and everyone tweeting all the time.

It's interesting how in a film like this I can completely accept whatever huge ridiculous things they throw at me, but the little things drive me nuts. Especially if they're not related to the action. Maybe I spent too much time temping in the aughts, but would they really let Bruce Willis walk right into that building without calling the person he was visiting or even taking his name? And with a gun? Fighting terrorists barefoot, dropping C4 down an elevator shaft, totally fine. The security guard knowing that the 30th floor is having a party? Nope.

Anyway, hardly a revelation to say "Die Hard is good." It's been said by many others very well, including quite recently. The surprise, I guess, is that after 23 years of hype I still thought it was great.

On Fall TV

2011-09-10T16:18:00.002-04:00

I'm excited about the fall TV season in a way that I haven't been for a long time. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I'm just excited about fall, being completely over this hot summer. Also, for some reason this year my commute - on both ends and on the train itself - is practically wall-to-wall print ads for TV. So I've had this sense of "OMG the fall season is coming! I have to figure out what I'm watching!" Good job, advertisers! Also, I've been looking at these for weeks without much else to go on. For whatever reason, I haven't seen many commercials for the season, and the preview articles are only just coming out. I paid some attention to internet buzz during the upfronts and the TCA press tour, but mostly I was more interested in fake shows. So - and this is weird for me - there are a bunch of shows I'm going to try that I know next to nothing about. Good job again, advertisers! (This same tactic has also had the opposite effect: The print ads for the new NBC comedies are so off-putting that I can't imagine ever watching them even if they turn out to be great.)

Anyway, here's what I've got planned for the season.

Monday
Monday is a weirdly full night this fall! Weird because it's not usually, and because I'm making weird choices. I should say that I don't watch a lot on the computer, and I always forget about on-demand. For someone who used to work at night at have very complicated schemes for programming the VCR for nearly everything I watched, I've become completely lazy in the age of the DVR. I want my shows delivered to a list, with as little thought required as possible. This is even the first season in a while I've given this much thought to my new show schedule. So if I have more than two things in one block, I generally have to make a choice. If it's really worth it I'll download it or catch up later, but at this stage in the season it's hard to say what's worth it. So having four shows at once at 8:00 on Monday is presenting a problem!

How I Met Your Mother
I really like HIMYM, and even in these last couple of not-great seasons I find it reliably funny and the characters reliably likable. Yes, even Ted. So this one's a definite keeper.

Gossip Girl
I'm conflicted about Gossip Girl, and this might be the year I give it up. It's always been good trashy fun, full of stage actors slumming it or people I know (they shoot in NYC, so for a while it was the Law and Order for the Spring Awakening set), but I almost quit last year because it really went off the rails. The characters got less likable (or less fun to hate) and supporting players who I liked were around less. I stuck with it though and the second half of the season got some of the old magic back, but I'm not sure I need to pick it up again. I'm undecided.

The Sing-Off
I'm not at all ashamed by how much I've enjoyed The Sing-Off before, though an a cappella contest is obviously not essential viewing. I suspect I'll skip it. Plus, it's two hours long and loaded with filler, so I can always just watch the second hour, which has no conflicts.

Terra Nova
I'm curious about this one, but if I stick with Gossip Girl I'll skip it. If it's good, it's the kind of show I'd probably like, but the odds of it being any good seem sooooooo slim. I don't know much about it, except that it's been fraught with production problems, and that's never a good sign. And it's expensive, so likely to get canceled if it's not a quick hit. I want to support major network sci fi, but not if it's awful!

The Playboy Club
I don't expect to make it through a whole season of this, but I'm curious to see what it's like. Laura Benanti is in it and I love her, and I could use a new stylish prime time soap. Assuming it is actually stylish and not tacky, sexist, or worse, tedious.

Tuesday
Glee
Glee is frequently terrible but I almost always enjoy it anyway. Even when it's bad I always find it interesting. And I usually enjoy the music, and Brittany's one-liners and Quinn's reaction shots. I prefer the sadder episodes to the wackier ones, so Kurt's pretty reliable for me. I can't argue with anyone's criticisms of this show, but it just works for me. Plus I got hooked on The Glee Project this summer so I'm looking forward to seeing how they awkwardly shoehorn all those new "actors" into the show.

New Girl
I was super-skeptical about this. I still am. But I like Zooey Deschanel, even if I don't quite buy the idea of her as someone who has trouble getting dates and generally hate forced "quirkiness." But the pilot is free on iTunes right now and I actually really enjoyed it! The cast has great chemistry, and it's a little...not dark, exactly, and not as mean as Cougar Town (which I got turned on to and totally hooked on this summer), but there's an edge to it that makes me believe these people could exist outside of a sitcom. I especially like the concept of the "douchebag jar." The writing actually makes Zooey convincingly nerdy and socially awkward (the flashback to her as a child is maybe my favorite moment of the pilot, mostly for the casting of the girl), and slightly crazy in a way that's fun to watch but could easily be off-putting on a date. I'm in. We'll see if the appearance of Justin Long later in the season changes that. The douchebag jar is gonna be full!

Ringer
Do I need to explain why this is awesome? Sarah Michelle Gellar as twins! One of whom is eeeeeeevil! If this isn't the most fun show of the season I will be very very disappointed.

Wednesday
The X-Factor
I probably won't actually watch this, but I'm curious enough to check it out. I miss having Paula Abdul on my TV, strange as that may seem.

Modern Family
Again, not much to say. I find MF consistently funny, if occasionally predictable. So there it is.

Happy Endings
ABC burned this off last season and it turned out to be really funny! Who knew? I caught up over the summer and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It shares a lot of DNA with Cougar Town and New Girl. Groups of friends who are amusingly mean to each other in a lovingly snarky way, wall to wall jokes, very little sentimentality. It's not a great show, but I enjoy the tone and find the cast very watchable.

Revenge
I know almost nothing about this show, which is actually sort of fun. I know that Connor Paolo, who played one of the only characters I still like on Gossip Girl, is on it, and that the girl from Everwood looks fabulous on the slightly batshit posters. Since I gather it's some sort of thriller, I'm sort of psyched to go in unspoiled. Hoping it delivers on the camp.

American Horror Story
Again with the batshit, this time the teaser commercials. I just saw a full commercial for this for the first time and it got me really excited. It looks genuinely twisted and very funny. Glee aside, I've never been a big Ryan Murphy fan. Nip/Tuck didn't do anything for me, and I've tried a few times to get into Popular to no avail. And my favorite Glee episodes are rarely the ones he writes. But I find him interesting, and this might be the show that makes me a fan. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with the genre. And maybe he'll throw in a musical number or two?

Top Chef Just Desserts / Top Chef
I know JD has its haters among original Top Chef fans but I am emphatically not one of them. I love these high-strung weirdos, I love Gail Simmons, and I love dessert. I'm so excited for Craig's inevitable meltdown, which so far is promising to reach "the red hots are for my mommy" levels of awesomeness. And when that's done the new season of original flavor will start, and I enjoy even a weak season of TC, if only for the food porn.

Thursday
Community
I just don't know about Community. I never loved the first season, though there were some great high points. Season two had it's share of those too, but also such low lows that it wasn't worth it. I'm inclined to give it another chance, but I'm not sure it's worth the time. I can always wait for the internet to tell me what's paintball-worthy and watch those episodes later.

Parks and Recreation
A show I didn't think I'd like that I totally love. So glad I gave it another chance with the second season. Thanks, Extra Hot Great and Pop Culture Happy Hour!

Vampire Diaries
I just love this ridiculous show. I think there's enough good bad television this season that I won't really miss Gossip Girl.

Person of Interest
I like Michael Emerson a lot. I like shows that shoot in New York. A friend of mine is working on this and I want to support her. But I also have two other shows this hour and this one doesn't really look all that promising, so I may just skip it.

Grey's Anatomy
I've stayed loyal to Grey's all this time, and felt rewarded when last season was actually really good (whiny Meredith aside, but that's the price of admission for the show). So I'm not about to give it up now.

The Secret Circle
It's Dawson's Creek with witches!! Programmed with Vampire Diaries. Clearly The CW knows what it's doing. Feels a little like old-school WB and I'm super psyched. (Or it could be Eastwick. We'll see.)

Project Runway
I stopped paying much attention to PR but Boy kept watching it, so I saw most of the last couple of terrible seasons. This season it got good again! So I'm back in. In fact I'm watching this week's as I write this, and Bert and Eyebrows are having a giant flaming fight. Damn good stuff.

Archer
I've written about Archer before, so I'll just say that I'm soooo glad it's back this week!

Friday
A Gifted Man
The show on this list I know the least about. I like Patrick Wilson and he looks gorgeous on the poster. That's pretty much it. I only learned the other day that Jennifer Ehle is in it too, and I love her! There seems to be some good buzz, despite it being on CBS on Friday nights.

Grimm
Obviously this will be terrible, but I'm intrigued. Isn't there another fairy tale show slated for midseason? And I'm still sad these got picked up and Ron Moore's supernatural cops pilot.

Sunday
The Good Wife
I love love love this show. Great writing, great acting (especially the constant parade of NYC theater people). And this year Alicia has a new, much better wig!

Pan Am
Another one I'm intrigued by but not so optimistic about. I like Christina Ricci, I like stylish period dramas, I'm interested in the golden age of air travel or whatever. It could be fun! Or it could be deeply dull.

So that's my fall TV. Looking at it on a grid it doesn't look like too much (it's a lot, but I've always watched a lot of TV) but after writing all this out it feels like too much! I mean, not that there's ever too much TV. And there are enough new shows that fall into the curious-but-questionable category that I'm confident that by midseason I'll have plenty of time for Smash! and Good Christian Belles. Still, it doesn't bode well for the Buffy rewatch or the Netflix Queue Challenge. I'll report back in a few weeks!

Netflix Queue Challenge: Romy and Veronica Mars' Summer Camp Sci Fi Reunion

2011-09-05T14:04:00.002-04:00

August kind of got in the way of my big plans to rewatch lots of old TV and tear through my Netflix queue. I blame Bravo and Logo, mostly. But I did watch some movies and then didn't get around to blogging about them. It turns out, not too surprisingly, that these are much less fun to write when I enjoy something without having a strong opinion about it than when I really love or hate something. Anyway, here are some short reviews.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
I was a little nervous to watch this, for fear that it would be too much for the same friends who were already mad at me for not liking Clueless if I didn't like it. But I really liked this one! I wanted to see it when it came out, but didn't, and it just never made its way to the top of my queue. In the meantime, I forgot what it was about, or maybe I never knew. I mean, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, obviously. But is there another movie where two women kill someone at their high school reunion, or did I make that up? Either way, that's not this! I knew it was a comedy but wasn't prepared for just how weird it is. Or for how great the supporting cast is. It's ridiculous, but if anyone can pull off ridiculous it's Lisa Kudrow, Alan Cumming and Jeanine Garofalo (Mira Sorvino less so but I enjoyed her too). And (spoiler alert!) this is the most amazing thing ever:

You Again
This is a formulaic, completely predictable comedy, of the sort I think we're seeing a lot of lately, but I thoroughly enjoyed it thanks to the cast. Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Victor Garber, and Sigourney Weaver could basically sell me any movie. Betty White and Kristin Chenoweth are doing schtick we've seen from them a million times, but they're used sparingly so it stays pretty funny. I can't say this is a good movie, but I found it delightful anyway.

Wet Hot American Summer
I really didn't think I was going to like this. I'm not much of a comedy nerd, and tend not to like a lot of the people in this who comedy nerds go crazy for (I like a lot of them too, which is the nice thing about a giant cast like this). And I figured ten years of hype would work against it. But it's totally fun! (Duh.) I've never seen most of the camp movies it's parodying, but I feel like they got camp itself really right (even though I went to a very different sort of camp), and I appreciated that affection and grounding in reality as things got completely ridiculous. It's hardly a revelation to say Wet Hot American Summer is funny. But it's maybe a little shocking that I liked it, given my usual reactions to...everything.

Doctor Who: The City of Death
Well, this is just terrible. When I started watching the Doctor Who reboot (which I love), I checked out an original serial just to get a sense of what it was. I accidentally chose wisely, with a story ("The Genesis of the Daleks") that was fairly enjoyable, and which I guess was Russell T. Davies' favorite too, since things from it came up over and over again in the new series, including one of the actors. I know not to expect too much from the original series, but every once in a while I read about an old story on io9 or AV Club and toss it in my queue. I might stop doing that. I wish I could remember what made me pick this one because there's absolutely nothing to recommend it, not even as camp. It's deathly dull. I know that there are better episodes than this, but with 25 years worth to choose from it seems that more are awful than not, and it's hard to believe the show, well, ran for 25 years! I'm glad it did, because it gave us the new version, and I know the original was for kids and all, but...it's just not any good. I try not to make blanket statements like that, since my taste is not yours and whatever, but trust me on this one.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 21-22

2011-09-04T15:29:00.000-04:00

Becoming, Parts 1 and 2

I wanted to watch "Becoming" when I knew I'd have time to watch both episodes at once, and then August happened and here we are. But it was worth the wait. I don't want to declare a favorite episode until I finish the series again, and I know there are some amazing ones in Season 3, but this has always been one of my top choices, especially for the pure emotional impact of the ending. But I'd forgotten how funny parts of it are, mostly thanks to Willow ("Are we experiencing a chair shortage?" "I haven't read about— oh.") and Spike ("It's a big rock. I can't wait to tell my friends. They don't have a rock this big."). I love Xander's anger, which has evolved nicely from jealousy to making some really valid points about Angel. It's great to see Darla again (that turned into a surprisingly long gig for Julie Benz).

There's some bad: The accents, the flashback wigs, Willow's hospital scrub/pajama/what the hell is that? dress (seriously, when she actually is in hospital scrubs, it could totally be her clothes). Whistler bugs me like really a lot with his stupid hat and his stupider accent. Are we meant to believe that Angel has been a crazy homeless guy for 100 years? The awkward retconning of the Buffy movie, and the slightly creepy revelation that Angel was stalking her for over a year.

But I'm searching for quibbles, really, and all of that goes up in smoke like an immolation-o-gram ("And you fall for it every single time!") with how good this episode is. It's a perfect end to the season and all that the characters have been through, while laying the groundwork for amazing things to come. Joyce finds out that Buffy's the slayer ("I mean, have you tried not being a slayer?"). Willow does witchcraft (it's the first time, right?), Spike and Buffy form an uneasy alliance ("I like the world.... Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs."). Xander tells Willow he loves her (and she calls for Oz). Our second mention of the Mayor. Everything feels completely earned, if not inevitable. We've been building not just to the big finish but to all the little moments in these episodes all year. All series, really. One of the things I've always loved about this show is how the characters keep growing and changing, almost always in believable ways.

It's such a downer ending. It makes sense - everyone's done a lot of growing up this year, and the stakes seem much higher than they did with the Master. But it's a little funny knowing there are five more near apocalypses to come.

Serious props to Christophe Beck for the score in this episode too. The music on early Buffy can feel a little cheap, a little original Star Trek fight musicy. But to this day I can't hear "Close Your Eyes" on my iPod without welling up a little.

Speaking of "Close Your Eyes," I must have seen the end of these episodes way more than I've seen the beginning, because (I'm a little embarrassed to admit this) I never realized before that Darla says "Close your eyes" to Angel before she kills him, just as Buffy does before she...kills him again. Yay rewatch!

Grrr argh guy needs a hug!

Some random links and videos in stuff in lieu of a proper post

2011-08-24T22:31:00.001-04:00

Oops, I haven't been doing so well with the blogging thing lately. It happens. I've actually been making decent headway on the Netflix Queue Challenge, but not posting about it.

And I'm not going to now. Just some quick links and things I felt like sharing….

First, of course, a bunch of Muppety things:

In case you missed it the other day, this video with OK Go and the Muppets is deeply weird and pretty great. I actually kind of hate the hipster arrangement of the song, but the video is fun, especially the very last scene. Rowlf and sheep are both pretty sure-fire winners.

I was surprised how much I like the rest of the album that's from, a collection of bands I've mostly never heard of covering songs the Muppets made famous. Doesn't it sound insufferable? But it mostly totally works for me! In the same way I find Jason Segal's Muppet love endearing, I like the idea that these musicians have been fantasizing about getting an opportunity to do this for their whole lives. Especially the guys who did "Movin' Right Along." You can, for now at least, listen to the whole thing at NPR.

Finally, Boy and I went to the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image last week. I was a little disappointed that there weren't more puppets, props, etc., but the focus was less on the Muppets and more on Henson as an individual artist. There was lots of fabulous artwork and insight into his thought and design process. And yes, there were Muppets - some replicas made for the exhibit by the Muppet Workshop, but also a delightfully worn Bert and Ernie, and some beautiful props and costumes from The Dark Crystal.

My favorite part of the exhibit was a bunch of old commercials they made in the 60s. They're deeply, deeply weird and dark! I guess nowadays we have the Schick bush-trimmer ad and pretzel M&M's, but I still found these somehow shockingly strange.

This one was my favorite:

This was a close second:

These are pretty great too:

(You can really fall down a YouTube hole with these.)

Okay, done with Muppets! Some more odds and ends...

Funny Or Die feels the same way I do about the Netflix price hike:

Netflix Relief Fund with Jason Alexander from Jason Alexander

Last year when I posted about Facebook, I said that one of the only privacy things I'd like to see changed is the fact that tagged photos of you go live without your prior approval. And they just changed that! I'm sure it had nothing to do with me! Still, it's a good thing.

Last but certainly not least, Michaela is continuing her Buffy rewatch and writing great stuff. She's quickly catching up to me, which isn't why I haven't watched "Becoming" yet, but it might work out nicely. I wanted to share this story:

I remember, way back in 1997, the teasers for this episode promised that we would meet Buffy's very first boyfriend (of course, we learn in the actual ep that she just had a crush on Ford in 5th grade). And at the time, discussing with Adam807 how awesome it would be if it were a guest spot by Luke Perry as Pike. I share this anecdote merely to illustrate that we've ALWAYS been this way.

It's true, we have.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 17-20

2011-08-09T09:33:00.000-04:00

I took a break from the Buffy rewatch for a few weeks (longer than it's been since my last post - I spaced the entries out a bit so as not to over-Buffy) and it's probably for the best, since after the four strong episodes of the last disc, this one is more uneven, with one of my all-time favorite episodes and one of my…not.

Passion
Oof, that is some bad Angel voiceover. And a truly tragic sweater on Willow. But this episode (by Ty King, a non-regular Buffy writer getting a pretty heavy mythology episode) gets better as it goes along, with a cute joke about how no one uses the library as a library, and a great scene between Giles and Jenny ("I know you feel betrayed." "Yes, well, that's one of the unpleasant side effects of betrayal."), then settling into some exposition-heavy setup for the end of the season. And hey, Willow's Jewish! And it's worth going over to Xander's to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas just to see him do the Snoopy dance! There's a great balance of lightness and darkness. The cast has really gelled and the writing and acting reflect where the gang is as friends, and how they're able to joke with each other, without ever forgetting the real danger they're in, and then showing us that danger in full force.

Jenny's death still shocks, even knowing now how much Joss Whedon likes to kill off his characters, especially right after they've reconciled with a loved one. Even after the lengthy chase sequence, the murder itself is so quick that it feels sudden, and it's violent in a way the show rarely gets (toward humans anyway). And I still remember how sad I was to see her go the first time around. Giles' discovery of her body, as orchestrated by Angel, is heartbreaking. Angel watching through the window as Buffy and Willow get the phone call about her death and Buffy's scene with Giles outside the warehouse, equally so. This episode is even better than I remember it - that opening voiceover really isn't fair to it.

I don't want to dwell on the clothes here - it's not my area and I wouldn't want anyone blogging about my high school wardrobe…or today's for that matter - but in one scene Xander is wearing a baggy flannel shirt and has boy band hair. In the next he has a color-blocked sweater that I can only describe as "Mark Cohen" (sorry, non-theater-people) and plaid…pajama bottoms? He is 1998.

And one nitpick I never noticed before: Why would a computer program that Jenny designed herself be called "Translator Pro" and have a ™ symbol next to it?

Killed By Death
Now this is just unfortunate. I don't even want to write about it (and hey, these posts are getting longer than I intended anyway). It manages to rip off both Freddy Krueger (even the score cribs from Elm Street) and the also terrible S1 "Nightmares" episode. After last week's great chemistry and raised stakes, here the cast is split up, and things move very slowly. Angel feels shoe-horned in. The one bright spot is this line from Cordelia: "Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass."

I Only Have Eyes For You
Now this is how you do it! This is basically a monster-of-the-week episode, but perfectly integrated with the season arc. There's even a blink-and-you-miss-it setup of next season's arc, with our first mention of the Mayor! Marti Noxon gives new viewers a little catch-up with Buffy's perfectly in-character line, "Do you remember my ex-boyfriend the vampire? I slept with him, he lost his soul and the demon that wears his face is killing my friends. The next impulsive decision I make will involve my choice of dentures." which tells them everything they need to know to understand what it means when Angel shows up later, and we're off.

This is one of my top ten favorite Buffy episodes (it may be one of my top ten favorite anything episodes) and every time I watch it I forget that Christopher Gorham is in it and get to be delighted again when he shows up. (I've liked him and found him adorable since long before he got buff and started taking his shirt off on Covert Affairs.) The ghosts reliving the night they died bit seems sort of old-hat, but it gets a nice twist here when Buffy and Angel get possessed, with both the clever gender-switch and the fact that Angel can't die like he's "supposed" to. Giles' giddy excitement over the possibility of paranormal activity, like we saw in Phases, is adorable, and his later insistence that the ghost must be Jenny is as heartbreaking as the Buffy/Angel scenes.

I hate to do this to an episode I love so much, but I have to play Continuity Cop for a second: Jenny's lesson plans were on her computer? But her computer burned, destroying the soul-restoring spell, two episodes ago. To be fair, I've never noticed this before in all the times I've watched this. I guess that's a drawback of the rewatch on DVD.

Ghost possessions aside, how much must it suck to be the janitor at Sunnydale High?

Go Fish
I almost didn't watch this one. And you know what? It's not so bad! It's hampered by two major things: Bad rubber monster costumes, and its bizarre placement at the end of the season. After the emotional bombshell of "Eyes," and with just two more episodes left in the season (arguably the two best episodes of the whole series), it's just weird to have a mediocre MOTW episode at this point.

But it's kind of okay! I mean, I'm all for swim teams after all. It's clunky both in concept and execution. For instance, they dress Xander in the baggiest clothes possible throughout the episode, presumably to highlight his Speedoed hotness, but it's not like we haven't seen his body before. Speaking of which, why is Cordelia so surprised that Xander has a good body? I mean, sure they haven't been naked together, but it's not like she doesn't grope him all the time. And speaking of groping, where has Oz been this whole disc?

And what a complete waste of the amazing Conchata Ferrell as a school nurse with maybe ten lines who becomes fish food. She could have been a really fun recurring character. She has great chemistry with Principal Snyder for the 30 seconds they're onscreen together.

And of course there's the overall clunk, with the whole "Steroids turn people into monsters!" thing. It's even worse than the "The internet is a demon!" thing. But compared to "Killed By Death" it's kind of genius.

"Becoming" is up next, and I'm going to save that for the weekend...or the next time I need a good cry.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Follow My Voice (With the Music of Hedwig)

2011-08-08T14:20:00.005-04:00

I was a huge fan of Hedwig and the Angry Inch during its original off Broadway run, and it remains one of my favorite musicals with some of my favorite songs. A couple of weeks ago I saw a production of it on a work trip - my first time seeing it onstage in over ten years - so when I was browsing my instant queue, Follow My Voice, with its picture of John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig on the cover, jumped out at me. It's another one I'd forgotten existed.

Follow My Voice is a very confused documentary, about a handful of kids at the Hetrick-Martin Institute's Harvey Milk School, an NYC public high school primarily for gay and lesbian kids, about the school itself, and about the making of an album of the songs from Hedwig benefiting the Institute.

As lovely as all those things are, at least two of them don't really make the same movie. And the two movies they do make...both kinda boring. The kids are super-sweet, but most of them are not terribly interesting. Don't get me wrong: All of them come off as nice and smart, and they have genuinely heartbreaking backstories, but watching their lives at Harvey Milk just isn't very compelling. I think I'm a reasonably interesting person but I wouldn't want to watch a movie about me either. In some ways I think the movie suffers from its lack of budget. Much of it is made up of video diary entries by the kids, and it looks like other sections were also shot by them and their friends on those same cameras. Their families are much discussed but (not surprisingly) not present in the film at all. In one scene we see the school talent show, and are told that one of the subjects, an MTF transexual, is going to sing Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," but then we don't get to hear her do it, I assume because they couldn't afford the rights. I get it, but it's weird to set up what probably would have been a very emotional moment and then not actually show that moment.

That said, the parallel story about putting together the Wig in a Box album pales in comparison to the legitimately hard lives the kids have had, and the attempts to match up the music with their stories come off as forced. There's some nice performance footage. Watching The Polyphonic Spree record "Wig in a Box" was fun, and setting a montage of the kids getting ready for prom was maybe obvious but totally delightful to watch. Other song choices were less inspired. I really liked the segment about the unconventionally beautiful girl with the burgeoning modeling career, but scoring it with "Origin of Love" was a stretch at best, a bizarre disconnect at worst. But I'm not made of stone. Setting graduation to Cyndi Lauper's rendition of "Midnight Radio,"* and the protests on the first day of the Harvey Milk School as a fully accredited high school to "Tear Me Down" are both geniusly manipulative, weep-inducing choices.

So, not a bad movie, but one that seems like maybe it didn't need to be made. I'd have been much more interested in a deeper look at the school and the Institute, and the struggles of its students. Instead of watching this film, go buy the album to hear some great songs and support a great cause.

*I was lucky enough to see Cyndi Lauper live a couple of years ago during one of her big gay "True Colors" tours, and during the encore she did "Midnight Radio" with surprise guest John Cameron Mitchell. I nearly wet myself. I was compelled to look it up on YouTube during that segment of the movie, so now you can wet yourself too!

Dog Days of Summer Movies: Camp

2011-08-07T22:28:00.000-04:00

My second - and last :( - "Dog Days of Summer Movies" post is up at Tomato Nation, this one on Camp. This one wasn't on Sarah's list; I'd seen it and loved it when it came out, and it seemed to fit well with the theme, and be an interesting companion to Summer Stock - one classic "Let's put on a show!" movie, one modern.

It turns out Camp has nothing in common with Summer Stock (both have songs and ill-advised romances, I guess) and also was a much worse movie than I remember it being, but it was still fun to watch again and write about.

Read it here!

Netflix Queue Challenge: Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure

2011-08-07T12:47:00.000-04:00

I honestly don't remember putting Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure in my Netflix queue. But it keeps coming up in my suggestions of things Netflix thinks I'd like, and there was a trailer on the Tangled DVD. I finally gave in and it was already there. This explains a lot about my queue. There are things in it that I not only don't remember putting there, I don't remember they exist.

But I do love High School Musical. I am not ashamed. I DVRed the original one day at the height of its popularity because I figured I should see what all the fuss was about. I mean, I love and work in musical theater, and this thing was allegedly getting kids interested in musical theater, so I should take a look. And honestly, they had me at the basketball number. I watched the second one completely excuse-free, and saw the third one in the theater. I went to the ice show. (Okay, small excuse there: I was just deeply curious to know how the hell that was going to work, especially the aforementioned basketball number.) And I had a blast. For a while HSM was the only thing I could have a conversation about with Boy's niece. And then one day even she was like, "Wait, why do you know so much about High School Musical?"

I just like them. They know exactly what they are, and they're fun, and they're pretty well made. The songs are perfectly crafted, hopelessly catchy pop songs - not exactly Sondheim but they do what they need to do and make me happy when they shuffle up on my iPod. These are not great movies, or great musicals, but they're perfectly enjoyable fluff.

I also like Ashley Tisdale. She's very funny hamming it up as the "villain" of the HSM movies, and while I didn't stick with the show, I really liked her on Hellcats, taking a character who could've been a hateful cliche and making her both real and charming. So yesterday, as I enjoyed a very lazy solo Couch Saturday, I figured I'd give it a shot.

Turns out, a little Sharpay goes a long way. As you know, I watch a lot of crap. So it says a lot that I couldn't finish this, even as background to reading. It's not just bad, it's boring. This is not a character that needed to be revisited (none of them do, really — who wants to find out that Troy wound up mowing lawns at the golf course while Gabriella got fat having 5 kids? Oh come on, you know that's what happens!) and the new characters are even more bland than the original HSM crew. And look, I don't need something like this to be realistic (no one goes angry-dancing through golf courses either), but what is with people on TV befriending stage doormen and getting let into empty, perfectly lit theaters, completely unsupervised? This does not happen. I mean, I get it, it's a stupid showbiz fantasy movie, but all fantasy needs rules that make sense to be believable. And while I'm at it, Toronto does not look even remotely like New York, you can't rent furnished apartments in luxury co-ops (can you? I mean, there are luxury rentals, but a "plot" point here hinged on the co-op board), and casting directors don't cast dogs, animal trainers do. And all that was just in the 30 minutes I actually watched!

On the bright side, Sharpay's mom is Nan Flanagan from True Blood! And the Wikipedia entry for this movie (come on, I had to find out how it ended!) is one of most hilariously badly written things I've read in a while. Read that instead of watching this movie!

Netflix Queue Challenge: Clueless

2011-08-06T15:17:00.002-04:00

I saw Clueless on video with friends in college not long after it came out, and I remember some of those friends being really into it and quoting it, and the entire soundtrack winding up on mixtapes, but I basically don't remember the movie itself at all. I remember enjoying it, but that's pretty much it. It's been on my list to rewatch for a long time, and was recently moved to the top after friends shamed me into it in that How can you not know Clueless ?? kind of way.

…And I sort of hated it. I know! I'm sorry!! This isn't me being contrary. I really wanted to like it! I assumed I would! I mean, I thought I already had once. Maybe you have to be a certain age when you see it? Maybe I actually didn't like it the first time and that's why I don't remember it?

Cher is sort of hateful. I kept waiting for her to get less so, assuming the point was that she started out awful and changed over the course of the movie, but no, she stayed pretty awful. The voiceover does not help this. She has good qualities: she's a good friend, she gives good makeover, she's not as dumb as she seems. But she remains such a brat throughout the movie, I really couldn't stand spending two hours with her. And I like Paul Rudd too much to want him to end up with her.

Mostly I was just bored. None of the famous quotes landed because I'd heard them a million times. Sometimes that results in an "Oh, that's where that's from!" or just a simple recognition of context, but here it made every other line feel totally artificial. (The one exception to this was "He's a disco dancing, Oscar Wilde reading, Streisand ticket holding friend of Dorothy" which I'd totally conflated in my head with this moment from Will & Grace.)

I saw a musical version of Emma earlier this year that was completely charming. Emma is actually intended to be unlikeable (I looked the book up on Wikipedia), but at least in this version she grows a bit and by the end you root for her. In Clueless, I was rooting for a car accident. And I don't really want t criticize the adaptation, because I don't care about Jane Austen, combining Knightly and Churchill into one character makes no sense. [UPDATE: Read the comments to see me get thoroughly schooled on this point.] The whole movie felt to me like someone got stoned and said "Hey, let's update Emma!" but then didn't really bother to do it. It feels cobbled together from so many different high school movies and other bits and pieces, none of which really fit together to make much sense or tell a compelling story or - most egregious - to be very funny.

I'll stop now. I know I'm upsetting some of you. Trust me, I'm as disappointed in me as you are.

Dog Days of Summer Movies: Summer Stock

2011-08-01T22:18:00.002-04:00

I was delighted and flattered to be asked to participate in Tomato Nation's Dog Days of Summer Movies Festival with a bunch of really fabulous bloggers. We're assessing summery movies, not like summer blockbusters (so, more Dirty Dancing than Transformers), and having seen the line-up I'm super-excited to read everyone else's posts.

My first post is up today, on the Judy Garland/Gene Kelly not-quite-classic Summer Stock. It's not technically part of the Netflix Queue Challenge because I picked it off of Sarah's list and it wasn't actually in my Netflix queue, but I sort of feel like any classic movie I "should" have seen but haven't should count, even if it's not bringing my queue numbers down. And somehow I've lived 36 years, most of them openly gay, and had never seen a Judy Garland film except for The Wizard of Oz until now. That's not right. This probably wasn't the best place to start, but it does have this classic fabulousness, which, as part of the never-explained show within the show, is just as context-free in the movie as it is here:

Anyway, head over there for the full post, and keep following along all month for what promises to be a lot of fun.

Odds and Ends

2011-07-24T22:13:00.000-04:00

I spent some time this weekend catching up on my reading, and discovered this post about Google+ in Slate by Farhad Manjoo. I frequently find Manjoo insufferable (let's not fight over the content of that link, it's the tone I can't stand), so I was surprised to see we'd written almost the exact same post. But hey, nice to be backed up by a major tech columnist.

This made the rounds a few weeks ago, and I resisted posting it because this blog was coming dangerously close to becoming Muppet Call. But as Jenn said, it seems to have been made for me, given my other interests as well:

Related: If you missed the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "inspired by" Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, find it and watch it (that link is to iTunes, but I assume it will be rerun at some point). It's not actually a good Law & Order episode, but as a send-up it's unbelievably brilliant. Cynthia Nixon somehow manages to do an impression of Julie Taymor's face, despite looking nothing like her, and not trying in any way to do her voice. And the costume designer deserves all the awards.

The full trailer for The Muppets came out around the same time, and I held back from posting for the same reason and then forgot about it.

I have mixed feelings. I loved seeing them all there, and it looks like it might be good, but Kermit's voice alone might be enough to make more than a minute of it unbearable. I have larger thoughts on that that I'll reserve until I've seen the whole movie. But also just as I was having that thought, there's that moment with Jim Henson's voice on the car radio, which is a very weird combination of incredibly sweet and incredibly cheap. Which, actually, might define the Muppets at their best. So we'll see.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 13-16

2011-07-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

Surprise
"You think he's too old 'cause he's a senior? Please. My boyfriend had a bicentennial." A much stronger showing for Marti Noxon (it's her 4th episode in a row), who especially nails the Willow/Oz cuteness. (Alyson Hannigan's innate cuteness plays a huge role in this, of course.) And bonus points for "Hey did everybody see that guy just turn to dust?"

But as a setup for the supposed great, tragic love story that is Buffy and Angel, I have to say there's something creepy about a 20-something-year-old guy (or 200-something) telling his 16-year-old girlfriend "You don't have to go to school."

Oh, yeah, and Angel turns evil.

Innocence
Angel bites a woman who is smoking a cigarette and then exhales smoke! That moment is so cool I'll let it slide that the show established in S1 that vampires don't breathe (Angel can't give Buffy CPR).

The "I gave it up to my boyfriend and he turned evil" thing is a wee bit heavy-handed. Much more powerful in the high school drama realm is the look on Willow's face when she sees Xander and Cordelia kissing. "It just means that you'd rather be with someone you hate than be with me." This episode is remembered for the former, of course, which makes it easy to forget how good Alyson Hannigan is in it (this is a strong disc for her, overall). Her small, quiet, "Giles, shut up" when she's realized what's happened between Buffy and Angel is just perfect. And Oz gets one short scene in which to be the most adorable ever.

Phases
I remember being sort of annoyed by this episode when it first aired, since the last two dropped such a huge bomb and except for two short scenes we don't see Angel at all this week (and Buffy seems pretty unbothered). Also, terrible werewolf costume and deeply cliche werewolf hunter. But knowing how much I'd grow to love Oz casts it in a new light. "Is Geordie a werewolf? …Uh-huh. …And how long has that been going on? …Oh, no reason. Love to Uncle Ken."

There are some nice little moments here too, like the reference to Amy's mom in the cheerleading trophy and "They might not look it but bunnies can really take care of themselves." I especially enjoyed Giles' uncontainable delight at werewolves, "one of the classics."

And did anyone realize that Karofsky on Glee is totally Larry?

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
We're back with the Big Bads and a Marti Noxon script, but all I can focus on is how deeply unflattering Cordelia's pants are in her first scene. It's the most "Oh, 1997" thing all season. Nice to see Amy back. I can't imagine anyone thought she'd keep popping up all the way through the Season 8 comic books. And the writers are playing with witchcraft and relationship vengeance in ways they'd return to. And the scene with Drusilla and Xander is just plain fun.

Michaela's been finding Xander's crush on Buffy annoying in S1 but it pays off really nicely here (not that it ever really goes away, all the way into S8). Xander's been kind of a dick lately, with the I-told-you-so-ing over Angel and the Cordelia, so it's nice to see him being a total good guy with love-spell-struck Buffy, and having a genuinely sweet moment with Cordy at the end.

Get Off My Lawn, Google Plus!

2011-07-21T11:47:00.002-04:00

I keep grumping about Google+ on Google+, so I thought I'd join the fray and compile my thoughts here, especially since it relates to my earlier post about Facebook.

The short version is: I don't get Google+. I mean, I get it; it's Facebook. And I already have Facebook. This isn't like saying "I already have Friendster." Right from the start Facebook offered something different. Google+ looks and functions exactly like Facebook. I'm all for competition, and would never say "Why do we need Apple if we already have Microsoft?" but like it or not, a social network isn't just an individual choice like picking a PC or a cola. It's only as good as the people on it, and if no one is on G+ then it's basically useless. I can't see a lot of people wanting to maintain both, or abandoning Facebook entirely, which would be required for G+ to reach a usefulness tipping point.

A lot of people are making the "it's a fresh start" argument. Well, a) A fresh start from what? If you're a Facebook Hoarder it's nobody's fault but your own. And b) If you're a Facebook Hoarder, won't you also be a G+ Hoarder? I've never understood this idea that Facebook is work. It shouldn't be. If it is, maybe you shouldn't be on Facebook. I've always only accepted friend requests from people I actually know. It's not that hard. I don't feel bad at all saying no! Even so, because I used to freelance, I picked up new coworker "friends" at a pretty alarming rate, so I have a pretty big Facebook network. But you know what? If something shows up in my feed from someone I barely know, or I get invited to someone's show I'm never going to see for the millionth time, or something offends me, I block or unfriend that person in the moment. It's not a project, it's not hard. I'm already getting Google+ notifications on my work email that I've been "added" by people I barely know who have obviously just dumped their entire Gmail contact lists in there. A fresh start it ain't.

As for what I share, if someone is my Facebook "friend," it means I have already decided that I'm okay sharing with him. So if a slight acquaintance seems something personal I've put online, well, I chose to put it online. In my current job, I started getting friend requests from work colleagues outside of my actual office, and because of how I use Facebook in a personal way, this was a line I didn't want to cross. But under the circumstances it also seemed rude to say no. So I made a list called "Professional" and set some privacy controls on it, and now whenever I get one of those requests it goes right into that list. It's two clicks.

And speaking of lists, you know that's all "Circles" are, right? Granted, the drag-and-drop interface is sexy, and I get how if you have 500 Facebook friends you're not going to start putting them in lists now, so the newness is appealing there, but, you know, this is something you can do on Facebook too.

I keep getting notifications that new people are "following" me (see above re: the random work contacts I've met once). These are not friend requests. I can't say yes or no to them. So it looks like Facebook, but it's really Twitter? One thing I really like about Facebook is how you get to decide who goes in your network. (One thing I really like about Twitter is how it's open, but they're not the same thing and don't serve the same purpose, and I don't think I want a hybrid.) So I don't have to put these people who follow me into Circles, and I suppose I have the choice to never share anything with them. But the default setting for posting on G+ is Public, and do you really think all those people who wind up on Failbook are suddenly going to understand how to change that? (Can you even change the default, or is it only on a per-post basis? I've looked and can't find a setting.) I do like that it shows up as a big bright button under the post, but hey, click on the padlock icon on Facebook - it's the same thing. Given how few of my very smart friends seem to know that all this stuff exists on FB, I have to question how, once it fills up (if it does), Google+ will be any different, since most people aren't that smart.

I think people think G+ will be the answer to their privacy concerns with Facebook, but Google hardly has a good track record with that, after the Buzz fiasco. Plus, they already have your search history and, for a lot of you, your email, calendar and reading habits. Add a social network and they basically know everything there is to know about you, and if you don't think they're going to find creepy ways to monetize that, you're insane. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm all for making money (off of services we don't pay for directly!) and I'm on record saying that you can't expect anything you post online to be truly private. I'm just saying Google isn't in this for philanthropy. On the iPhone app (which I will grant is very sexy, way better than Facebook's useless app), if I click on "Nearby," I can see a whole list of people I have never heard of before, with their locations. Wanna bet they didn't know they were sharing that with the world? Like I said, if you're concerned about privacy, don't share things online. I'm not blaming Google for that info being there. You shouldn't be posting your location without understanding how the service works. My point is just that your privacy isn't Google's concern any more than it's Facebook's or Twitter's or Foursquare's.

I was on Facebook pretty early, too, when it was still only available to schools. I had an alumni email address from my college and a bunch of interns who insisted I join. I didn't use it for a year, when the next summer's batch of interns found me there. By then it had developed a bit and I got pretty hooked. So I'm fully willing to eat these words a year from now (or less) if enough people do make the switch and the network becomes more useful. I'm not saying it's a bad product (and it's in beta, so anything could happen), just that it replaces something that I don't think needs replacing, without offering any compelling reason to switch. I also expect Facebook to copy G+'s best features, because that's how these things work, and there really won't be any reason to change.

I guess, also, I don't want to start over. The whole point of a social network is its network. I like mine! I like the random assortment of high school friends (and high school enemies) and family and colleagues and real people who I see every day. I like finding random unexpected connections between those people. I like when people from disparate parts of my life get into a conversation in the comments of something I've posted. Starting over makes all that go away until I build it up again. And then G+ will be exactly the same as Facebook in every way, not just the cosmetic ones.

UPDATED: I caught up on some reading this weekend and it turns out Farhad Manjoo said almost the exact same things I said about Google+ in Slate. Nice to know I'm not alone in this! And from what I can gather from his columns, he's an early adopter extraordinaire, and a big fan of Google.

A Challenge to the Netflix Challenge

2011-07-20T13:24:00.001-04:00

Last week, Netflix raised their prices and Twitter exploded. People are PISSED. And I'm just sort of…not. I tweeted as much and got shot down from a few sides, so I thought I'd explore it here with a few more characters. Sure, I'm a little annoyed by having to pay more, but it's still a pretty damn good deal. Watch as many movies as I want, many of them instantly, for $16 a month? That's amazing! A movie ticket in NYC is up to $13. An iTunes movie rental is $4.99. I have no idea what Blockbuster costs these days (um, does it even still exist?) but back in the day I recall it being around $5 for one movie. So let's put it in perspective.

As one Twitter friend pointed out, it's really amazing that they've kept the price so low for as long as they have. I suspect that people like me who let DVDs sit for months were subsidizing the power users, but with the shift to streaming that model doesn't work anymore. I grant that the percentage of the price increase is distressingly large, and I wonder why they didn't just do a small raise every year. My gym does that, $1 or $2 at a time, and I barely notice. I mean, most things do that. Which I guess is why I can't get too worked up about Netflix.

I wonder if the streaming thing - which is really added value over DVDs, what with the instantness - is what's causing the PR problem here. There's a sense that anything on the Internet is free. Strangely, instant gratification doesn't look like it costs money. We don't see paper and printing and postage and the elves that scan the DVD barcodes when it's zapped to the Wii. But bandwidth is expensive, and so are storage space and licensing fees and Netflix uses a hell of a lot of all three.

This general sense in our society lately that nobody wants to pay for anything - be it music or taxes - has been really bugging me for several years now. That's a whole separate post that I may or may not ever write, but I think it's why all the reactionary complaining struck a nerve. And I am a champion complainer! I get that the economy is bad. I get that I'm very lucky to have a job that I love and that pays me reasonably well and I can afford luxuries like unlimited DVDs. But that's just it - it's a luxury. And it's one that I value. We all make value judgments all the time. I appreciate not just the selection and the service but the ease of use. Look at how much money Apple and Amazon have made by basically hiding the transaction for iTunes and Kindle. It's dangerous and a little scary, but it's also supremely simple in a way that I consider worth paying for. That single click to have something in 30 seconds is well worth 99¢ over the time I'd have to spend searching for something on bit torrent and hoping the file's not corrupted when it gets to me.

I'm not saying I've never downloaded anything illegally (I'm not saying I have either, FCC and RIAA!), just that our expectations of what we "should" be able to get instantly and cheaply are a little out of hand. I think $16 for my insanely long Netflix queue is still a pretty amazing deal, and it's one I can afford. So why get all crazy about it? I'd much rather save that energy for idiots on the subway or the lack of seating or air conditioning in Penn Station.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 9-12

2011-07-18T17:51:00.000-04:00

Hey, are you reading MCM's awesome rewatch recaps too? Because they're awesome! And she started at the beginning, so we're not even covering the same ground yet. Go here for them!

What's My Line, parts 1 and 2
I know a lot of fans turned on Marti Noxon, but I always really liked her writing. Still do. But I find it interesting that she not only got an important two-parter as her first credited episode, but then wrote four out of five in a row. This one strikes me now as very over-written. It has lots of lines I remember even though I haven't seen it in years (including one of my favorite Buffy/Angel exchanges ever: "How do you know [about that]?" "I lurk."), but it's also aggressively quirky in a Diablo Cody sort of way that I guess I liked when I was 23 but find deeply annoying now.

But one of those moments stuck: Xander says to Cordelia, "Come on, if you want to be a member of the Scooby Gang, you've gotta be willing to be inconvenienced now and then." Is this the first use of "Scooby Gang" on the show? In this context it makes perfect sense - Xander is actually using it ironically as a joke. I always found it weird later on when they referred to themselves like that, as if a fan thing had crossed over into the writers' room, but here it makes sense that it's an in-joke with the group.

This is a big episode for the…Scoobies. Willow and Oz finally meet for real, and Xander and Cordelia hook up (which seems as sudden now as it did then; I was actually thinking "Oh, look at how they're laying the groundwork for that" as I watched, expecting it to happen in a few episodes, but then it happened in 5 minutes). This is also our introduction to Kendra, a divisive character who I always liked. But boy is her accent worse than I remember. (And if she's all unsocialized and all slay all the time, why would she dress like that?)

Ted
Not much to say about this one except, "Aw, John Ritter." Also: "So creepy, John Ritter!"

Bad Eggs
Bad episode! Actually, it's not nearly as bad as I remember. But wow, the cowboy vampires. There's some nice stuff with Joyce here, and a conversation about how Buffy and Angel can't have a "normal" future that I'm pretty sure The Vampire Diaries lifted word for word last season.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 5-8

2011-07-13T10:02:00.001-04:00

Reptile Boy
When I picked up the DVDs to resume this rewatch, I groaned about having to start with this episode. Partly, it turns out, because I had it confused with "Go Fish." So I'll groan about that one when I get there. "Reptile Boy" isn't so bad! It's a little heavy-handed (frat boys are eeeeeeevil) but it's actually pretty fun, and Xander gets shirtless. I think I remember it unfondly because I was always a mythology guy, and I wanted to get back to the "real" story.

Halloween
This is one that I remember better than I liked it this time around, but it's still fun. Slutty ghost Willow ("the ghost of what?") is great, and it's a nice turnaround for Xander to get to be soldier boy for a while. SMG's attempt at an accent is painful, and a harbinger of old-timey flashbacks to come. Spike and Dru make an appearance, and the general chaos is fun. But it's oddly paced, and a little clunky.

Lie To Me
I feel pretty well-versed in Season 2 but I guess it's really just the second half, because I haven't seen this one in years either. It's much better than I remember. The vampire wannabes are a bit over-the-top and on-the-nose, but that's kind of the point. Jason Behr's performance is quite good. Most importantly, is this the first time Giles gets to be funny on purpose? His scene with Buffy at the end is funny and incredibly sweet, and really kicks their father-daughter relationship up a notch.

The Dark Age
Weird to have four basically standalone episodes in a row (a whole disc!) in a season that I remember so much for the strength of its mythology. There's some Angel, Spike and Drusilla stuff sprinkled throughout (knowing what I now know about how TV gets written, I feel like they were inserted into this and "Halloween" late in the game), but this episode is all about Giles' backstory, and some adorable awkwardness with Jenny. I didn't remember the actual plot of this one AT ALL. Another one I don't think I've seen in 10 years or more. I never cared for Ethan, and the monster in this one is weirdly ill-defined, but the episode sets up some nice stuff. Jenny just can't have a good day, can she? Also, the kids' talking about their image of Giles, in tweed diapers, and "There should be more math. This could be mathier" is great.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 1-4

2011-07-11T09:40:00.001-04:00

The first disc of Season 2 is where I stopped my first attempt at this rewatch, so here's one more shmushy post before I start doing individual episodes.

Season 2 gets off to a rocky start. Is The Anointed One really going to be the season's Big Bad? Is there really an episode about making a Frankenstein girlfriend for a zombie jock? (Seriously, is there? I watched this a year ago and looking at the synopsis for "Some Assembly Required" now I still can't believe it happened.) It's a mess.

And then "School Hard" happens. You can call Spike and Drusilla (fun fact: OSX's spell-checker knows Drusilla) cheesy, you can complain about their ridiculous accents, you can get into where Spike would go later, but let's not, because they are such an amazing jolt of energy in this episode. They're delightfully crazy, insanely fun to watch. The Master had that whole grandiose, sort of Bond villain thing going on, and that's all well and good, but Spike and Dru put a pin in that instantly and it's just fun. They also help turn Angel into a real character by giving him something to do besides mope and moon, and making his past much more relevant ("People still buy that Anne Rice crap? …You were my sire! My Yoda!"), which of course will become a bigger deal later.

This episode, the 15th of the series, feels to me like the first truly great one, the first one where the show really figures out what it is. In a time when shows rarely get more than a few episodes to find their legs, this feels pretty remarkable (though I guess The CW, like The WB before it, is still small enough that anything anyone is watching can limp along for a while). It's also impressive that the show became such a hit. People really stuck with it, or found it later, in a time before DVRs and Netflix. Though, again, my negativity is mostly hindsight. The early episodes look worse when you know what's coming.

Of course, next up is "Inca Mummy Girl," which makes "Teacher's Pet" look like a masterpiece. It's a shock to see an episode this bad right after one so good, and disappointing to not get to see more of Spike and Dru. We do get our first brief glimpse of Oz though. Still, it's no wonder my rewatch stalled after this.

Buffy Rewatch: Season 1

2011-07-10T09:14:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite memories of summer camp didn't take place at camp, but on a night off when I was a CIT and a few of us saw the original Buffy movie at the Berkshire Mall. I don't know why we picked it, but we were basically alone in the theater and we MST3Ked our way through the whole thing. It was delightfully awful. (I've since seen it again and kind of love it, and also learned about Joss Whedon's unhappiness with the film.)

A few years later, I fell asleep after dinner in front of the TV (I majored in napping my senior year) and woke up just as the pilot of the Buffy TV show was starting. This being the early days of the internet, and me being in the bubble of college, I had no idea the show existed, but I was immediately intrigued. Both because I couldn't believe they had based a TV show on that movie, but also because it was, you know, good. I was hooked.

I've been a fan of many things, before and after Buffy, but Buffy has really stayed with me. I taped the whole series (partly out of necessity because I often worked at night in those days, but I kept and carefully labelled them out of love), and it's one of the few things I will watch a rerun of pretty much whenever it's on. I sort of feel like my knowledge of the show is encyclopedic, but the truth is, I've only watched it from start to finish, in order, the one time (you know, over seven years) and my memory is shit.

So watching all of Season 1 again was interesting, because while the two-part pilot remains pretty amazing, the rest of it is wildly uneven. A lot of it is just budget. The effects are terrible, and the video quality hasn't fared well over 14 years and a digital transfer. (I should check and see if my tapes look better or worse; plus I bet the commercials are hilarious.) But a lot of it is a show finding its legs. It's funny, looking at the episode list now, some time after I rewatched these episodes, there's only one giant clunker ("I, Robot…You Jane"), but knowing what the show would become - particularly how sharp the writing and (most of) the acting would get, it really feels like a show finding its voice.

I think Michaela is absolutely right about the awkward pacing in the pilot, which pretty much goes for the whole season. And also about how good Sarah Michelle Gellar was, which is weird in hindsight. After seven seasons of Buffy and her strange film career, I wouldn't think to call SMG a great actor. But she's really perfect here, and also playing the only character who's pretty much fully formed from the beginning. The supporting cast is hampered by their writing, again, especially in hindsight of knowing what the characters would become. That 20/20 hindsight makes Season 1 a little hard to rewatch, actually, because it means that some of my favorite episodes - particularly "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" - turn out to be pretty hokey and poorly paced.

Actually, Buffy's not the only fully-formed character: The Master is pretty great. He's kind of a cliché, but a delightful one, and Mark Metcalf plays him so perfectly. The season finale, with its running gag of "Nice dress," and "I may be dead, but I'm still pretty," is pretty great, and sets up what's to come so nicely, it almost feels like an extension of the pilot.

Buffy Rewatch: Prologue

2011-07-07T22:07:00.001-04:00

The AV Club has a great feature called TV Club Classic where, when things get slow in the TV season, they revisit older shows. For a while now, Noel Murray has been watching - for the first time - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and later Angel alongside it). I love Buffy, and I loved watching Murray discover the show for the first time. I thought I should watch it again myself.

I didn't get around to it (that Murray is almost done tells you how long I've been not getting around to it), and in the meantime Logo started showing them. Logo tends to favor the later seasons (lesbians!), and frequently shows episodes in a seemingly random order. So I kept dipping into Buffy pretty regularly, and enjoyed rediscovering later episodes that I hadn't been wild about the first time around, finding them much more enjoyable when removed from the burden of how great the first few years had been. There's also the Season 8 graphic novel series, coming out in dribs and drabs for like two years, which isn't very good but it's kept the characters around. So I still didn't get around to starting from the beginning.

Then Logo did a "Fan Favorites" vote and marathon, and Joe was, shall we say, disturbed. And rightly so. He made his own list, which was delightful, and reading it made me finally start my own rewatch.

And then I stopped. Four episodes into Season 2. There was new TV to watch, and Netflix queues being challenged. In the meantime, though, Amazon had an amazing sale on the complete series DVD set, which seemed like a sign. And an ex-intern from work started watching for the first time too. He'll randomly IM or text me with things like, "Xander and Cordelia? Really??" and it's been fun to vicariously watch it with him at the same age I was when I watched it the first time.

Long story short (too late), I finally resumed my rewatch last week! As I watched, I had thoughts. And since I'm trying to blog more, and I like goals, I thought I'd write about those thoughts. These won't be recaps; the sites linked above and of course TWOP have already done this far better than I ever could. I'll just be doing impressions, short posts, a few episodes (probably by disc) at a time. Based on the readers of this blog I know personally, I'm guessing a lot of you are Buffy fans too. And if not, you know, you can skip these posts; I won't be offended (or know). I highly recommend the show, of course, if you haven't seen it. It's on Netflix Instant. I'll be spoiling here, so definitely skip if you're going to watch!

And, BONUS: I convinced the super-smart, feminist high horse-riding MCM to do this with me (it really didn't take much convincing). We're already out of sync, since she's starting at the beginning and I'm picking up where I left off, so we'll be linking to each other and commenting on each other's posts as they come. I'll be putting up my first one in a couple of days, giving her time to catch up a little.

Stuff I Like!

2011-07-04T13:41:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago over margaritas, Joe mentioned that he liked my Muppet post in part because "it was so sweet and normally you hate everything" (or words to that effect; there were several margaritas). It was Joe who called me "a finely tuned hate machine" (affectionately?), which immediately became the new tagline of this blog and in fact inspired Crankypants J. Hatemachine's last name.

This is a big part of my personality, and an even bigger part of my online persona. It's genuine - I am deeply judgmental, and very easily irritated, impatient, and a natural contrarian. In college, my best friend and I were often compared to Statler and Waldorf.

But I also have the capacity to be a total softie. I think they're connected. Whatever it is in me that moves me so quickly to snap, can also easily trigger tears. It's not that my heart is cold and dead, its passion swings both ways (not like that). So not to blow the whole crankypants persona, but I started thinking about all the things I am a total sucker for. One might say, "defensively." It was a little weird to find myself in a position where I had to be all, "Hey! I like stuff!" but I know I brought it on myself. Anyway, some pop culture weaknesses came to mind and I started writing and then, typically, didn't finish. But now I'm back. This is a very incomplete list; it's literally just the things that popped into my head at the bar and on my way home. Again, please remember there were margaritas.

Moulin Rouge
I love this movie. This movie is why I feel so betrayed by Nicole Kidman's creepy new face. I have a playlist on my iPod of all the songs from the movie, in the right order, from the two soundtracks and a couple ripped from the DVD. I am not a crackpot. It's musical theater manipulation at its finest, with the soaring strings and the very dramatic tangos. I can watch it forever. Related:

Musical Theater
Duh. Also, kids who love musical theater, which makes me feel like I haven't completely wasted my life. Also, while not actually my favorite show, Once On This Island gets me every time. There's a great documentary called After the Storm about a bunch of kids putting on a benefit performance of the show in post-Katrina New Orleans which isn't on DVD (yet?) but is worth keeping an eye out for on TV.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
More on this soon.

Star Wars
Not much to say here. I've never put on Jedi robes or bought a light saber or written fan fiction, but I know an awful lot about these movies, and have even been known to be a bit of an apologist for the prequels (a bit!). I will watch any of the original trilogy any time they're on TV. I have all the soundtracks and for the original trilogy can largely tell you what's happening while any moment of music is playing. I think I have decent nerd cred, but this is certainly my nerdiest.

Say Anything
I'm not a big romantic comedy guy, but Say Anything always works. In hindsight I think Lloyd Dobler is maybe kind of a dick. I mean, standing outside someone's house with a boom box? There are laws against that. If the movie were made today he'd be an annoying hipster, wouldn't he? But I don't care.

Kurt's Dad
Glee is a deeply flawed show, but any storyline involving Kurt and his dad inevitably gets me. It's almost like those scenes are pulled from a different show, but that's kind of why they work. I don't think I'd want a whole show of them. The contrast is part of the point.

Margaritas
I mean, obviously.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Tangled

2011-07-03T23:24:00.000-04:00

Hey look, it's a blog post! Busy-ness at work and, well, a lot on TV, have kept me from both the blog and the Netflix Queue Challenge. It didn't help that I've had Tangled at home for three months. Sure, there's Watch Instantly, but, you know, TV.

Anyway, I kept Tangled lying around for so long not because I was avoiding watching it, but because I wanted to watch it when I was able to give it my full attention, and with Boy. I'd heard such good things about it, and I'm predisposed to like Disney musicals, and Alan Menken musicals, and anything with Donna Murphy in it.

But...meh. I mean, it was fine. But there was so little to it. There's hardly any story, really, and all the characters felt so thinly drawn. I did really like all the lead actors. Zachary Levi (who I've never seen in anything but found mildly off-putting because of the way I find Chuck mildly off-putting (no, I've never seen it, yes I'm being judgmental, hello look at the name of the blog)) was quite good, in a way that reminded me of Kevin Kline (maybe that's just my love of Disney's Hunchback coming through). Mandy Moore was good in an awfully bland lead role (Tiana and Anika Noni Rose set the bar pretty high in The Princess and the Frog). Donna Murphy was deliciously Donna Murphy-ish, though again without much to do. The idea of such a brilliant musical theatre actor, who tends to brighten up anything she's in (eg Star Trek: Insurrection) as a Disney villain made me really happy, but she was such a boring villain that it seemed like a waste. She did great with what she had though, and I felt like the animators really captured her physicality too. I also thoroughly enjoyed the chameleon.

There were some beautiful sequences, but why did everyone have such creepy giant eyes? And after seeing a display at Disney World about the animation and how there was a whole separate team of animators just for her hair, I expected more from it technically (the movie, not her hair...well, her hair too).

It fell flat as a musical too, with only a handful of songs, none of which are going to be Disney classics. Because there were so few of them, they all felt a little shoehorned in. It never seemed like a world in which people sing. And then they did. It felt obligatory.

None of that would have mattered if the story had been better. It just all felt a little lame. The supporting characters had no, well, character, and the deus ex machina involving them felt completely unearned. I appreciated the attempt to put a twist on "Rapunzel," but what they came up with didn't make a whole lot of sense, even for a fairy tale. And why on earth would you name your child after lettuce unless there were a reason to?

I'm being hard on Tangled because my expectations were high, I guess. I enjoyed it well enough, and laughed several times, but it mostly made me wish I were watching Aladdin or Into the Woods (now when is someone going to cast Donna Murphy in that?).

The Great Muppet Caper

2011-06-12T19:59:00.001-04:00

Last week on the Extra Hot Great podcast (which if you're not listening...why not?) Tara questioned adults who are really really into the Muppets. My own Muppet post was only a few days old, and because they're lovely friends, Tara and Joe actually gave me an exemption from the "these people are crazy" because my "Muppet love is pure." It was a very sweet gesture, but it wasn't actually necessary because her argument was pretty unassailable. It's true, it's a little weird to be really into something that's for kids (though the original Muppet Show was actually never for kids specifically, though of course kids' enjoyment was in mind). I can own that. And my love may be pure, but it's not unconditional. The conversation on EHG wound up being mostly about the post-Henson track record of the Muppets, and the lack of any reason to be optimistic about the new movie. And while I have kinder thoughts about some of the later projects than Tara (particularly Muppets From Space), I really can't argue with this. My excitement for the new movie is entirely irrational, but it's there. We'll see how it goes!

The podcast sparked an entirely delightful conversation on Twitter about all of this. Unfortunately, there was no hashtag, so I have no way to direct you there to read it, but during a particularly stressful day at work, I had the pleasure of occasionally escaping to a spirited discussion with very smart and funny people...about puppets. This is why I love Twitter.

On the heels of that, Montykins wrote this great post about his Muppet love (he also has a custom Whatnot and it's adorable!), in which he also runs down every Muppet movie in (his) order of quality. If you liked my Muppet post, you'll love his.

Then Glumpish sent me a fantastic essay by Lawrence Miles called "Nine Things Which Appeared on The Muppet Show, But Wouldn't Make It Onto Family Television These Days," which is every bit as amazing as it sounds. Sadly, the whole thing isn't online anymore, but you can read some highlights here and maybe if you're a better Googler than I am you can find the rest of it.

I am not a crackpot.

Super 8 Is Enough

2011-06-12T14:23:00.003-04:00

I don't usually write much about new movies here, what with the endless (and currently stalled) Netflix Queue Challenge, but I saw Super 8 last night and I find myself full of thoughts. I should say up front that I enjoyed the movie, because I'm about to rag on it a whole lot.

My thoughts on Super 8 actually help me finally articulate my thoughts on Lost, and the later seasons of Alias, and pretty much everything JJ Abrams has ever done. In general, I like stories, and I like characters, and I like those things to make sense. That doesn't always apply - I can very happily enjoy something that's aiming for out and out batshittery, like Legion. I can turn my brain off at a summer blockbuster or a mindless, crowd-pleasing Broadway musical and just enjoy the pretty colors. But Super 8, while partly a summer blockbuster, clearly aspires to be more, with its loving period detail and cast of really pretty great characters (the kids reminded me so much of It, I kind of wished I were watching them in a remake of that instead).

What Abrams tends to do, in my opinion, is go "Hey, isn't this neat? Who cares if it makes any sense? It's so cool! Why do you want to know what it means?" And this drives me nuts. Which is not to say that I need every question answered all the time (I actually quite liked the finale of Lost...though maybe that's just because I was happy it was over). I like a little mystery, and one of the things I liked about Super 8 was the ambiguity of the ending, which (trying not to get to too spoilery here) lacked any sort of "5 months later" coda to show how fighting a monster had fixed everyone's relationships or whatever. I like how there wasn't a big scene that explained everything in a monologue by Dr. Exposition. I actually would have preferred if we never saw a scene without one of the kids in it, since filling in things outside of their point of view took away some of the fun of watching them discover things for me. In all of these movies, the buildup to the monster, with its little glimpses and slow reveals (which I thought Abrams did beautifully here), almost always makes seeing it in full a let down.

But that said, the entire film felt like one big macguffin. What were the cubes? Why was he stealing microwaves? Why did the tanks start shooting? Doesn't matter, it's just cool. It wouldn't have bothered me if it had all been just mysterious background stuff, but Abrams actually worked very hard to give all of these things such weight, only to have them be essentially meaningless. It's one thing to have an audience go, "Huh, did you see the monster pause and look longingly at that oil rig? I wonder what that's about?" It's another to say to them, "LOOK AT THIS! THIS IS IMPORTANT! The props department spent a lot of time on this but nobody really knows what it does but TAKE A LONG LOOK BECAUSE IT'S SO COOL!"

Even the title is sort of a macguffin, which the ad campaign played into, which made me feel a little like I was sold a bill of goods. Again, it's a weight issue. We're led to believe that it's a REALLY BIG DEAL that the kids get film of the train wreck and the monster. But it sort of isn't. By the time they get the film developed (a dose of period reality which I did quite like), they - and we - have already seen the monster and even had it largely explained to them through other means. The grown-ups already know something is up. No one needs to be blackmailed with the footage, and the bad guys don't even know they have it. It makes literally no difference at all to the story (the monster story anyway) that these kids are making a movie or that the camera was rolling during the crash. None.

After the movie I was spinning theories and Boy said, "What has JJ Abrams done to you??" I don't know, but I can tell you it involved a Rambaldi device and some ice cream.

I did quite like the smaller movie that was contained within this movie, about these kids making their film and being kids. And like I said, I liked when the mystery was mysterious because they didn't know what was going on. I would have liked more of that, which I thought the trailer sort of promised. (The Abrams-produced Cloverfield, with it's found footage conceit, actually did this perfectly; if our protagonists don't know it, neither do we.) If the movie had centered around the film of the wreck, instead of "Hey, look over there, it's a monster!" I think I would have been much happier.

And as much as I liked those characters, it became hard to care because the stakes felt so low. For all the explosions and ~~smoke monster~~ ~~Cloverfield~~ alien sound effects, I never once thought that one of the kids - one of the leads, even the adults - would be seriously hurt. Even when (giving up on not trying to be spoilery here) Alice got grabbed, I had no doubt that she would be rescued somehow.

One more dig at JJ Abrams before I move on to nice things: WTF lens flare?? It didn't bother me in Star Trek; In fact, I barely noticed it until people started talking about it, because it seemed to make sense in that world. But it made NO sense here. It was sometimes so far removed from its light source that I just stared at it instead of whatever I was supposed to be looking at. Please find a visual trademark that is less annoying.

I really did quite like the performances, and the way the kids' friendships and interactions felt so real. It was refreshing to see teenagers played by real teenagers (though I guess these characters are much younger than the typical TV late-high-school teen too). I hope Joel Courtney becomes a big star, and I'm now totally in love with Elle Fanning. I wish Kyle Chandler had had more to do.

I sometimes love Michael Giacchino's music (Alias, The Incredibles) and sometimes not (shut up, Lost, with your Horn Bleats of Importance), and I really liked his work here. It didn't overpower and there were some cute homages to ET, Close Encounters and Star Wars (there were probably others I didn't catch).

Lens flares aside, I liked the look of the movie, which felt both totally real (not that I lived in a small town in 1980, so what do I know?) and like a nice nod to the movies of the filmmakers' (and my) youth.

I did enjoy myself. It's a fun night out. I just wish it had been more of the movie I expected. And I think my love for the first season of Alias (and, okay, I'll say it, Felicity) has led me to be excited for and then disappointed by everything JJ Abrams has done since. Is there a statute of limitations on that feeling? Because my goodwill should probably have run out by now. (See also, Joss Whedon.)

UPDATE: It has been pointed out that JJ Abrams wasn't really responsible for Lost. And no, he didn't run the show, but he is a producer who picks things that match his own style, and puts his stamp on them. By directing the pilot he set the tone and the style for the series. Using a composer I associate almost exclusively with him did the same. The same is true of Cloverfield. So I stand by my assessment!

Just for the Halibut

2011-05-30T21:09:00.001-04:00

"Well I've got a dream too. But it's about singing and dancing and making people happy. That's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And, well, I've found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And it kinda makes us like a family."
-Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Movie

I have a Muppet problem.

My love of the Muppets is deep and unironic. Some of my earliest memories are of The Muppet Show. What I find interesting, looking back, is the way the Muppets have remained a pretty constant presence in my life. As I child I was probably a bigger fan of other things, but my interest would wane (and sometimes wax again in adulthood), but the Muppets were just sort of always there in some way or another.

Jim Henson's death was the first - and maybe the only - celebrity death that really affected me, as if I had known him. 20 years later, I still wonder what work he still had in him, and get sad that we'll never see it.

Maybe that's why the Muppets make me so emotional, or maybe it's just something about the power of good puppetry, that weird magic that happens when an inanimate object comes completely to life. Either way, I have some kind of Muppet weeping trigger.

Last year I was in Atlanta on business and I went out of my way to go to the Center for Puppetry Arts. I was completely delighted by the props and puppets from Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas. And then, in a small room, were a handful of Muppet Show and Sesame Street characters. I teared up looking at Rowlf. He was clearly old and worn through in spots, like a well-loved stuffed toy. Yet in spite of that it was somehow alive, this character - this person (okay, dog) - I knew so well, given such a strong personality by Henson that even motionless in a glass case it felt like looking at an old friend. Or like meeting a celebrity idol in real life. A museum employee told me that although Rowlf had appeared in various films, he hadn't spoken since Jim Henson died. I later learned this story wasn't true at all, but I still want it to be, and I'm not at all embarrassed to have welled up over it in front of a stranger.

Okay, so this is a reasonable thing to get emotional about. But when Boy and I went to Disney World in December, I cried at the Muppet 3D movie. You guys, I cried at the trailer for the new movie. I have a Muppet problem.

I've been watching season 3 of The Muppet Show on DVD, and it's delightful but I can absolutely make it through an episode without breaking down. I can't explain any of this. I guess I get emotional about post-Henson Muppet things (the Disney World movie is one of the last things he worked on before he died) that get it right, which is harder than it looks (see Muppets Tonight and Muppet Treasure Island). When the tone (and the voices) are on, it's a little like magic, like these people (not just Henson but all of the original Muppeteers, most of whom have retired) are somehow still in these characters' souls. (As for seeing the original Rowlf, come on, you'd have to be heartless.)

ANYWAY, I've been thinking about this because for Christmas, Boy got me a gift certificate to make my own Muppet at FAO Schwarz (yes, I cried), and today we finally braved the crowds of horrible tourists and did it. It. Was. Awesome. The Whatnot Workshop is in a quiet corner of the store (it turns out, as much as I hate tourist traps like FAO, once you get through the first few feet past the entrance, it's actually pretty cool in there). The women who were working the counter really seemed to enjoy their jobs and love the Muppets. They would occasionally play with the samples for passing children, and they were really good at it! The set design was thorough but not overbearing, and there were plenty of samples to look at, which was helpful since you design your Whatnot in two dimensions.

You're given a packet of colorforms (colorforms!) with which to design your Muppet. I could have done this for hours (you get to keep the kit, so I just may). I'm easily stymied by too much choice, but I was also fascinated. Changing just one part could completely change the whole personality of the puppet. For instance, I thought the blue guy looked a little…special, with his wide grin.

But add eyes, and the grin becomes sinister…

…or kinda drunk…

…or sweet.

Even just a nose makes a difference.

I had originally thought I would make a Muppet of myself, but none of the parts really leant themselves to that. And besides, that would basically be Nicky from Avenue Q. So I decided instead to make Crankypants J. Hatemachine. A Muppet of my soul, if you will. There are really only four parts to pick, but we did a lot of mixing and matching. I chose the frowny-faced body, and different features made him look depressed, or scared, or way too mean. Even changing the outfit changed the feel of him.

Finally, I gave them this…

…(and some money), and 20 minutes later…

…they gave me this:

I love him! I imagine him as a cross between Sam the Eagle and Bert. Definitely someone voiced by Frank Oz back in the day. I didn't cry even a little. This was pure joy. I might have to make another one someday. I like that orange body and the hoodie too. Crankypants may need a friend.

I guess it's a little ironic that I used the thing that most brings out my inner sap to manifest my inner grouch, but given how much I liked Oscar when I was little, maybe it just makes sense.

Netflix Challenge: Fame Costs Edition

2011-05-10T11:19:00.005-04:00

Part of the problem with the Netflix Queue Challenge is the way I add things to my queue faster than I can watch them. And when those are long-running TV shows, I'm screwed. My friends at Extra Hot Great (which, by the way, I guested on last week and then forgot to post about here) added an episode of Friday Night Lights to their canon of great TV shows a few weeks ago, and the clips they played backed up the whole "it's not really about football" argument about the show, and convinced me that I should finally check it out.

Um, it's really about football. At least at the beginning.

I have such contempt for the culture being portrayed here that I can't get past it, even though the show clearly has its own mixed feelings about it. I certainly don't think playing football and taking it seriously aren't worthwhile. Nor are fandom or school spirit or hometown pride. But if high school football is the most important thing in the world to these people - and not just the players or the students or the parents but the whole damn town - I find that deeply sad. Why is there a radio talk show dedicated to criticizing hardworking teenagers seemingly 24/7? I understand that this is a real thing in many places, but I don't want to watch it. That even the likable characters are part of this, endorsing it, turns me off completely.

For a little while, I thought that wouldn't matter. I was incredibly impressed with the pilot, especially, believe it or not, with the football game that ends it. In under an hour, they did an amazing job of making me care about these people and understand the stakes for them, and the game itself was staged so that I - who have never watched a football game in my life - was completely wrapped up in and excited by it. That's no small feat. It didn't hurt that since this is old and I live in a pretty pop-culture-saturated world, I had a vague sense that something terrible was going to happen to Jason, which added to the tension, but I think it would've worked anyway.

I thought I was sold, but the next two episodes remained very much about football, and I didn't have the patience to wait around for Coach Taylor's wife and daughter to take on the larger roles I know they'll eventually have. And the way Jason's injury was treated (again, by the town, not the show) further turned me off. So after three episodes I decided I was done.

When I turned off FNL I poked around the instant queue for something else to kill 45 minutes with and found the TV version of Fame, which I'd forgotten was there. I loved this show as a kid, though now I couldn't tell you why. I remember watching it on weekend afternoons in syndication. Was it always in syndication? I didn't see the movie until years later, and while it's now one of my favorites, at the time I remember being annoyed by the actors who weren't the versions of the characters i was used to. Anyway, the pilot is a weird mishmash of rehash from the movie and new setup. It's not a sequel to the film, since it has characters who would have graduated mixed in with new ones, but it skips almost all of the setup for Leroy, Bruno, Coco, et. al., assuming we already know who they are. Much like in the movie, not much happens in the pilot, but it's a decent introduction to the world.

I watched two episodes, and was really surprised by how well it holds up as a TV show. There's a lot of "Oh, the 80s" sighing, but it doesn't suffer from the pacing problems I've come to expect from these things. I mean, it was never a very good show, but it hasn't gotten any worse with age (its or mine). It's exactly how I remember it. (Though having now seen the movie many times, it is interesting that, so far at least, Montgomery appears to no longer be gay.)

I also love how New Yorky it is. Artsy or no, you believe this is a real city public school. Lots of the kids have accents. They behave largely like kids. I feel like today this would all have been sanitized and autotuned away. And even though they shot mostly in LA, exteriors are really NYC, and I love looking at all those 80s buses, and subway stations, and restaurants and theaters that no longer exist. When they started renovating Lincoln Center a couple of years ago, the only thing I felt sentimental about was the replacing of the fountain, entirely because of how they danced around it in the opening credits of this show.

Watching old Fame reminded me of new Fame, the 2009 remake of the original film. It was surprisingly not terrible! I didn't expect much from it, but I like these sorts of movies usually, and the teachers are played by Kelsey Grammar, Bebe Neuwirth (who never have a scene together, interestingly), Charles Dutton, and Megan Mullally, which was enough of a draw to check it out.

It's not an actual remake (Debbie Allen plays the principal, suggesting that it's more of a sequel…though IMDB says her character has a different name from her original one), but it's surprisingly faithful to the original film. It's set in a fake, run-down public school, instead of the actual current home of the School of the Arts (the exterior is a real school, just not that one, and not the old one either). Although the characters are new, all the broad strokes of the original movie are in place: Coco's brush with porn gets an update, there's a rap producer (instead of a synthesizer genius) studying classical music, and an inner city kid whose family doesn't know he's at PA (now he's an actor/rapper instead of a dancer). Everyone's shifted around but it's all in the right spirit. They even stop everything cold for a rendition of "Out Here On My Own." As everyone should.

The adults are as delightful as promised, especially Bebe, with her withering, dream-crushing looks in ballet class, and Megan as the tough musical theater teacher with a heart of gold. The movie is about the kids, but I'd have been perfectly happy to see an entire film about the teachers.

And of course I'm a total sucker for a big inter-disciplinary graduation number. It's no "I Sing The Body Electric", but I have a weakness for pop songs with string sections, and even moreso for ones with an inexplicable African dance break.

Castingjay

2011-05-09T21:18:00.002-04:00

Look, I really like The Hunger Games, but I don't understand these people (and I am friends with some of them) who are all in a tizzy about the casting. First of all, if you're the sort of person who's getting worked up about actors' hair color, is there any possible way you'd enjoy this movie under any circumstances? Clearly, no depiction of these characters will ever match the image in your head, which is in fact the nature of filming a book (I suppose Harry Potter might be an exception, since it was illustrated - and that worked out okay). Also, deeply faithful adaptations of books rarely work, since the media are different and changes are actually necessary to make a good movie. This is even true of plays, which are obviously closer than books. So you'll be annoyed about that. Finally, there's just a really good chance it will be terrible.

Of the many things to hate about the Twilight movies (to be clear, I hate the books too, I'm shifting to a slightly new argument), I hate the painfully awful hair on many of the actors the most. If it's that important to have someone be blonde, cast a blonde. Or spend some decent money on dye and wigs, and don't make pretty people look ugly for no good reason. Which I realize is kind of the argument of the Hunger Games whackos, but my point is that it's not that important. Peeta's blondness is not a plot point. It's not relevant in any way at all. I would rather see a good actor who's fun to look at with the "wrong" color hair, than spend two hours looking at a wig line or thinking about conditioner.

I'm not saying I'm not interested in the casting of this movie and the conversations about it (clearly I am, or I wouldn't be writing about it), but interest and investment/caring/consternation/upset are not the same thing.

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago, when the internet exploded over news of…somebody, I don't even remember. I didn't post it because I couldn't think of a snappy ending. I still can't, but today Mark tried to start a Twitter meme of #UpcomingHungerGamesCasting. It didn't really take off but there are some funny ones, so I'll let that be my snappy ending! And I will totally see the movie, and most likely complain about it. But just because that's what I do.

An Out-Of-Character Request

2011-04-27T22:05:00.001-04:00

For as long as I've been reading it, Tomato Nation has been doing an annual fundraising drive for Donors Choose, a charity that lets, well, donors choose to fund specific projects for schools that have been submitted by teachers.

I hate stuff like this. I mean, not charity, or kids (well, kids, but not education), but every time I get a message from a friend about some charity walk or something I bristle. When we get letters like that at home, we call it junk mail. We have national registries to stop telemarketers. But e-mail and Facebook mean every friend with a cause can spam us now. I'm sounding like a total crank, but really all I mean is that if I gave to every friend who asked, I'd be broke. So I generally don't give to any, and choose charities to give to on my own.

So while I admire Sars' use of her considerable online popularity and the work she puts into doing this huge thing, I tune it out every year because I'm a horrible person. And I guess I also misunderstood what Donors Choose was, exactly. Somehow I thought it was all about donating books to libraries? This is what happens when you ignore the whole thing and never click the links.

ANYWAY, last week I got successfully guilt-tripped, and I finally checked out Sars' DC page, thinking I'd give 10 bucks for pencils or something. And god damn it! Right up top was a project to turn a classroom into a multi-purpose theater space (I'm not really clear on how floor mats do this, but they had me at "black box theater"). This got me searching, and with minimal effort I found a music composition project and a show choir. As you know, I'm kind of a sucker for this stuff, and my cold, stony heart was sufficiently melted. I also stumbled across a request for a life-like baby doll to discourage teen pregnancy, which I wholeheartedly support, even though it's totally unrelated.

I don't have much to give, and that felt especially meager when split across four projects, so now I'm doing exactly what I said up top that I hate: Please check out my Donors Choose page and support one of these worthwhile projects (the composition one has already been completed). Or, if you hate the arts or love teen pregnancy, head to Sarah's for a much wider selection. Since this is all crowd-sourced, a small contribution still counts toward the larger goal.

That's enough of that. Thank you for your time. I'll resume hating items in my Netflix Queue shortly.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Cannibal! The Musical

2011-04-23T10:19:00.002-04:00

Cannibal! The Musical has been in my queue for years. It's a pre-South Park project by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and since I'm seeing their current musical, The Book of Mormon, this weekend, I decided it was time to finally watch it. I haven't watched South Park regularly in years, but I've always liked their sensibility, and of course I love a good musical and a good musical parody.

Unfortunately, Cannibal! is neither. It opens with a title card telling us that it's found footage from a 1950s flop attempt to capitalize on the success of Oklahoma! that's been colorized and digitally reconstructed. The card also says that the violent scenes have been removed. Those are both promisingly funny ideas, but it's not clear what they have to do with anything. There's really no attempt made to make it look or sound like a film from the 50s, and the very first scene is reminiscent (deliberately, I assume) of Monty Python's violent Sam Peckinpah sketch, so that's a confusing mixed message.

The whole thing has the feel of a Funny Or Die video, except it was made in 1993. And it's a feature. And it looks like it was shot on VHS. As a side note, it's really amazing how technology has made low-budget film-making possible. And musical-making, for that matter. The video quality is fuzzy, the sound quality is worse, and the music is Casio-keyboard-style. What these guys could have done with a digital camera and Garage Band!

There are some really funny moments, like a gag where someone tap dances in a hole in the ground (if you've ever seen a classic movie musical, you've probably seen a tap number on an improbable surface where no one is wearing tap shoes), and a rather too literal interpretation of the term "dream ballet."

But it's mostly just a jumbled mess, hard to judge on the merits of either a movie or a musical. It was neither good enough nor funny enough to work for me. It just feels like a college lark, which is all well and good, especially from people who would go on to produce great things, but it shouldn't necessarily be released into the wild. There are ideas here that Parker and Stone are still returning to - genre parody, musical theatre, mormons, wholesome Americana turned on its head - but it's sort of remarkable how not good it is here. South Park was only three years away. Certainly the crude animation suited their budget better, and it seems like the shorter format helped them focus. I mean, this movie is 27 minutes longer than Legion. I think they really benefited in later projects from having collaborators who would edit them, not to mention more experienced producers and songwriters.

It's an interesting artifact, but I can only recommend it to super-fans...and maybe not even then.

Netflix Queue Challenge: Legion

2011-04-09T19:01:00.003-04:00

Legion is a thoughtful meditation on faith, violence, and mankind's relationship to God, and a fascinating spin on biblical myths.

Just kidding, it's a horror movie in which God decides to smite humanity and sends down His buff, tattooed angels to kill us all. And also zombies, sort of. And there's a character named Jeep. And it is AWESOME.

I realize this won't help the case I made in my last post about my taste in movies, but I loved this. It's not good, but it's everything I want a movie like this to be. I feel like the filmmakers took it totally seriously, but were never afraid to reach insane heights of batshittery, and to include lines like "Are you asking me to explain the behavior of a motherfucking pestilence?" It's campy without ever trying to be campy. If Red Riding Hood had gone over the top like this, I would have liked it a lot more.

It's also, at times, genuinely scary. It reminded me of Stephen King right before he went off the rails. Like somewhere between Misery and The Regulators. The tiny truck stop in the middle of nowhere had a very King feel, down to the outdated jukebox, the colorful stereotypes with tragic backstories, and the mystical black man short order cook. The possessed ice cream man had an especially Kingish feel to him, as did the possessed little girl, who of course had a balloon, because all small children carry balloons at all times, especially after they've been made into angel-zombies.

Whether you enjoy Legion will depend entirely on your tolerance for this type of movie in general. It's sort of a perfect bad movie, with pretty decent performances, special effects, and action sequences, in service of an absolutely ludicrous idea. It made me coin the word "heinolarious."

Netflix Queue Challenge: Nowhere Boy

2011-04-03T21:31:00.002-04:00

I feel like I say things are "boring" a lot, which makes me sound like...I don't know, someone who hates talking and likes Michael Bay? Both those things couldn't be further from the truth. But, yeah, I found Nowhere Boy pretty darn boring. To be fair, I watched it in a hotel room while stuffing conference registration packets, but I don't see how it would have been less dull without that distraction.

It does that biopic thing that I hate: relying on the audience's knowledge of the future to make events out of otherwise ordinary moments. John gets his first guitar, John's aunt hounds him about wearing his glasses, John's mother teaches him "Maggie Mae." None of these things are actually at all interesting if you don't know that John is John Lennon. And not really even then. Turns out the formation of the Beatles (which the movie isn't actually about at all, but it happens during it) is no more exciting than any other group of teenagers starting a band. Unless, as I said, you know what they'll become. Even the title is a bit of a marketing tease, having nothing to do with the story or with "Nowhere Man."

About halfway through, the central drama of his relationship with his mother kicks in, and there was one scene that I thought was pretty fabulous, but then it went right past that into soapy melodrama. And sometimes real life is melodramatic, but that doesn't mean I want to watch it.

All of these criticisms are pretty much with the script. The cast is appealing, the acting is excellent, and the film is beautifully shot, with a great sense of time and place. It is unquestionably well made. But when "Mother" played over the closing credits, I was grateful both to hearing the real John's voice, and that the movie was over.

Netflix Challenge: TV Edition (Mostly British)

2011-03-28T10:58:00.002-04:00

Archer
Comedy recommendations are hard. What people find funny is so subjective. I totally fit the profile of someone who should like Arrested Development and The Office, but they just don't do it for me. But my friends at Extra Hot Great were very adamant about Archer, and even though we don't always agree (see Arrested Development and The Office), they so had my number on this one. I tore through the first season on Netflix, in a weekend, then caught up with the current one.

On the surface, Archer is an animated parody of 60s spy shows, but it's so much more than that. It lovingly skewers pretty much every movie and TV genre you can think of, especially classic sitcoms. It is deeply fucked up and frequently dirty, and crosses all kinds of lines. As absurd as the plots get in each episode, it has an unexpected continuity that makes its over-the-top characters seem like real people. I love the look of the show - both the animation and the weird world which is somehow both the 1960s (reel-to-reel mainframes, mini sweater dresses, weird desktop computers and the KGB) and now (the internet on those tiny desktops).

The voice acting is also fantastic. It's interesting to hear H. Jon Benjamin on two shows at once playing such wildly different characters (he's asshole superspy Archer and sad-sack Bob on Bob's Burgers). His voice is pretty much his own on both shows, but the characters couldn't be more different. It's fun to see how the acting, the writing and the animation come together to make both characters equally credible. Archer also has Jessica Walter, Chris Parnell, Aisha Tyler and George Coe, all actors I like a lot. And I love that there's an opening title sequence that treats the actors just like they would on a live-action show.

I recognize that it's not for everyone, but for my money this is the funniest sitcom on TV right now. Season one is on Netflix Instant and season two is currently on F/X.

That Mitchell and Webb Look
I have no idea how this British sketch show ended up in my queue, but it's good! It reminded me of Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show and The Catherine Tate Show all rolled into one. It's very silly and Mitchell and Webb are very charming. My favorite sketch was about a What Not To Wear-type show where the woman being made over wore a burkha. The show does that thing where long sketches are broken up and we keep coming back to them throughout the show. In this case, we come back to Mitchell and Webb as "themselves," worrying if the sketch is racist. One of them (I don't know which is which) is still wearing the burkha, presumably because he enjoys it. When he takes it off, he's in blackface. "Blacking up again, I see," the other guy says with a sigh. It all seemed pretty tame to me, and clearly sending up both racists and political correctness, but I'm confident an American show would never dare go there, and it was my biggest laugh of the episode. I only watched the first episode, but I'll definitely come back to it when I need a fun way to kill half an hour.

Downton Abbey
This BBC miniseries got a lot of buzz when it was on Masterpiece Theatre a few months ago, so I checked it out even though my anglophilia generally runs more to scifi and comedy than something this aggressively classy. I mean, I liked Gosford Park but it didn't move me, and I've never seen Upstairs/Downstairs. But I am seriously hooked on this. It's really nothing special - a classic-style British period soap, with all the servants and the lords and ladies and lots of quippy gossip and sneaking around. The plot centers around obscure inheritance laws which I still don't fully understand. And there's a smattering of those annoying "olden times are craaaazy!" moments that drive me so nuts on Mad Men (there it's "pregnant women smoking??" here it's "the Titanic? But it's unsinkable!"). But it has a nice modern approach that feels fresh, and is also set a time when the aristocracy was starting to change (that obscure law is largely wrapped up in the fact that women can't inherit, which several of the characters are rightly pissed about). The writing is quick and clever, and frequently surprisingly funny. It's shot on location and it's gorgeous to look at. The cast is great, led by Maggie Smith at her Maggie Smithiest. It's a delightful way to spend a lazy weekend afternoon.

What A Big Mouth You Have

2011-03-27T20:39:00.000-04:00

...The better to yawn with, my dear!

Okay, so, having weirdly seen both bad teen fairy tale updates in movie theaters this season, I feel like I should write up Red Riding Hood along with Beastly. But I don't have much to say about Red because of the way I was SO BORED.

By all normal markers, Red Riding Hood is the better movie. It appears to have a decent budget, it's mostly beautifully shot, it has B-list actors instead of C to D ones (sorry, NPH). It's a werewolfy take on the story, but not a modern one, so it's set in a vaguely medieval world where talk of demons and witches makes more sense (although I found its sets no more convincing than Beastly's fake New York, which wasn't helped by the way everyone always looked underdressed for the weather, but not enough to justify it by being tawdry).

But I think the movie's surface "quality" took the fun out of it for me. It wasn't laughably bad, but it wasn't good either. It just stuck in that no-fun place in the middle. It seemed unsure of what it wanted to be. Was it a horror movie? A clever twist on an old story? Forbidden romance? Twilight or Hunger Games? It was kind of all over the place, and the fairy tale felt like an afterthought, tacked onto a run-of-the-mill werewolf movie because somebody thought they needed a hook.

The pace is plodding, and I had a hard time getting a sense of time. Typically, the story is supposed to take place over three nights of the full moon. After the second one I looked at my watch, shocked that we weren't done yet. And even though they say three over and over again, I think there were four. Maybe five. Some nights seemed to last just minutes as required by the plot.

Speaking of plot...there sure was a lot of it! I'm not a total M. Night Shamalyan hater but I worry when a film seems to be emulating The Village. I suppose I should've seen the twist coming, but I was too busy being annoyed by how self-consciously the film kept trying to throw us off the scent (ha!) to the point where I didn't care anymore which of the dozen possible twists was the real one, and the movie actually needed to use flashbacks to remind us of stuff that had happened half an hour earlier.

The actors largely seem to be in different movies. Gary Oldman is having Dracula flashbacks, and Virginia Madsen doesn't do period well. Amanda Seyfried does her best with a lot of staring (insert joke about her giant eyes here) and the boys are pretty, which is pretty much all that's required of them. Michael Hogan basically does Drunk Tigh for an hour, which I always enjoy. Julie Christie knows exactly what movie she's in but was sadly underused.

In the end, I wanted more camp. I mean, have you seen the trailer? It strongly implied camp. And more sex. For the record, Joe, who has apparently become my go-to companion for this sort of film, liked it much better than I did (and better than Beastly...a comparison I should really stop making because they're really totally different movies). Oddly enough, my recommendation is the same as it was for Beastly: If you like this sort of thing, Netflix it. There are worse ways to spend two hours.

Martha, Martha, Martha!

2011-03-26T14:59:00.000-04:00

Even though I still haven't even opened some of the many Chrismukah cookbooks yet, I can safely declare Everyday Food: Great Food Fast (From the Kitchens of Martha Stewart Living) the best of the bunch. Say what you will about Martha, the woman knows how to write a cookbook (or how to hire people who know how to write a cookbook). Her reputation for being overly fussy and pretentious is well-earned, but I've only come to be a fan in her looser, post-prison, live TV show years, and find her approach to food is usually pretty straightforward and easy. That's this book's mission, of course, but her Cookies book is the best thing in my kitchen, for the same reason, and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who likes to bake or wants to start. Sure, there are some insane, highly decorated things that I'll never try, and a few overly fussy directions that can usually be ignored, but mostly there are very simple recipes, beautifully photographed, and always delicious.

Unsurprisingly, Martha's books are also very well organized. The cookie book is divided by cookie texture! Everyday Food is broken up by season. Each dish takes up two pages, with the recipe on one side and a gorgeous photo on the other (I prefer cookbooks with photos, as they make it easier to make snap judgments about what I might make). Each chapter ends with recipes for sides, and the back of the book has basics and techniques like roasting a chicken, making "perfect" rice and pasta, salad dressings and sauces.

Except for when it's too hot out to want the oven on, I don't have strong seasonal feelings about food, but I've stuck to the "winter" recipes so far, and they've all been very successful, and as quick and easy as promised. I started with Chicken With Prosciutto and Sage, about which there's not much to say but I like the way the prosciutto fuses with the chicken and makes that pretty red color in the photo. (I love that all these recipes are online.) It's also my favorite kind of recipe: one that teaches a technique and can be easily adapted of modified the next time I make it.

The same is true of the Mushroom Tart I made the following week. The original recipe - puff pastry topped with caramelized onion, mushrooms, spinach and goat cheese - is delicious, and the next week I used the techniques for the puff pastry and the onions, but made sun-dried tomato pesto in place of the spinach.

Much less adaptable but so damn good: Enchiladas With Pumpkin Sauce. This is the most complicated recipe I've tried from the book so far, what with roasting the chicken (you can also just go buy a rotisserie chicken, but what's the fun in that?) and getting out the blender and wrapping the enchiladas and all, but it was well worth it. It certainly wasn't difficult, just a bit more time-consuming and dish-dirtying than the others. It's very rich, definitely not light! It tasted very authentically Mexican to me (though what do I know?), and the heated up leftovers were even better.

There's not much to say about Salmon Steaks With Hoisin Glaze, but it's my favorite food photo I've taken in a long time (sometimes I don't try very hard so I can get to eating quicker!). I was trying to be low-carb that week so instead of rice I served it with some sauteed broccolette with garlic.

If you're not a fish person, I assume this would work pretty well with chicken too.

Last but not least, Tandoori Chicken With Yogurt Sauce was a bit of a disappointment. It's not that it was bad, it just didn't have the tang or the vibrant color I associate with tandoori chicken. And the "sauce" was more of an apple slaw - a side dish rather than a condiment (that might be because I got lazy and used the food processor instead of a box grater). But there's nothing wrong with that and it was all pretty tasty. I'd love to find out what makes real tandoori chicken that amazing red, and try this recipe with a bit more spice. Also, it's basically impossible to buy a small container of plain yogurt, and I have no interest in yogurt on its own. But that's just me.

In possibly related news, my diet is not going well...

No, wait...

2011-03-23T18:47:00.000-04:00

...THIS is my new favorite thing on the internet.

Why doesn't Glee do real show choir stuff like this??

Do you hear the people sing? Well, do you??

2011-03-23T15:41:00.000-04:00

This is my favorite thing on the internet right now, and it's three years old. SA showed it to us on New Year's Eve, and I thought of it again last week when people were talking about the Les Miserables concert with the Jonas brother on PBS, and yet again listening today's Slate Culture Gabfest discussion of Rebecca Black and whether or not we have the right to be forgotten on the internet, and I found myself actively seeking out more clips.

I mean, where to begin?

I'm especially curious about the boy playing Marius. Aren't we all? Even in high school, how does casting that astoundingly wrong happen? There seem to be plenty of boys in the chorus who at least look the part, and their singing...well, it can't be any worse, can it? I mean, Motel in Fiddler, Seymour in Little Shop, but Marius? There's "yay, high school, everyone gets a chance!" and then there's...this. What I wonder most is, do you think he knows it's absurd?

I imagine Corky St. Claire directing this. How else to explain the berets (French!) and maybe the best touch, this completely modern sling and "ghostly" choir robes:

Going out and getting that sling is easier/cheaper than tying a dirty dishtowel around his arm? Okay.

But here's the thing. As painful as this is, I'm kind of genuinely in love with these kids. If you didn't make it through "One Day More," go back up and jump to the key change at 2:19. They are GOING FOR IT. If these kids have an ounce of shame, they are good enough actors to completely suppress it. No one is just going through the motions. As someone who cares deeply about the future of musical theatre, I have to admire these kids' passion. This isn't some $2,000 autotuned vanity video. This is a high school with, apparently, a terrible theatre department (but at least it has a theatre department!) doing an ambitious show because they love it. And some parent was proud enough to put it on YouTube (and smart enough to turn the comments off).

None of these kids is going to be a star, clearly (maybe Eponine, who is clearly the Rachel Berry of the group). But these are fans. They're future ticket buyers, and maybe even future producers and directors. I don't know...somehow their awful singing has cracked my heart of stone.

O hai

2011-03-22T21:35:00.001-04:00

Over the weekend, this blog was added to the list of fabulous sites over at Damn Hell Ass Kings (I guess "blogroll" is still the appropriate term here, even though I just mocked MCM for using it to refer to Google Reader), so that anyone who follows them is theoretically now following me. In other words, I now have more than 12 readers for the first time in all the years I've been writing here off and on. So I thought I should say hi!

A lot of these guys are writers whose work I've read and liked for a long time, and I'm delighted to be in their company. Also, since I've been trying to write more here, this is awfully good motivation. (It's also awfully bad timing, as this week is going to be crazy at work and next week I leave town to run a conference, so we'll see how it goes.)

So, anyway, hi new people! I'll try not to suck.

Netflix Queue Challenge

2011-03-13T10:32:00.003-04:00

My friend John has a great feature on his blog called John vs. The Netflix Queue. He recently watched and wrote about the Toy Story series, none of which he'd seen, which led to a discussion about films we haven't seen that we "should" have. My queue is similarly massive, and also full of things that I really "should" have seen. It's funny how we all judge each other on things like this. I was shocked that he'd never seen any of the Toy Stories, but people are similarly shocked that I've never seen Top Gun or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane or Army of Darkness. So, you know, these things happen. I joked to John that if I thought I wouldn't peter out after a month, I would steal his idea of blogging my way through the queue, and he said, "Oh you should! We can motivate each other!" As if we're dieting or quitting smoking instead of watching movies. So, challenge accepted, here we are.

My Netflix queue is a dumping ground. Anything that sounds remotely interesting to me from a review, or a commercial, or a conversation, I just add. (My Amazon wishlist and Kindle samples work similarly.) So there's some deeply random stuff in there, some of which I don't even remember adding, or recognize at all. There are things I have seen but want for whatever reason to see again. I'm always moving things I want to see right now to the top of the queue, so other discs never get the chance to move up. And I don't watch a lot of movies anyway. I almost never see them in the theater (I'm trying to do more of that) and at home I watch a lot of TV and play a lot of video games and my Netflix take a back seat. Boy and I have lived together for over 6 years and still maintain separate Netflix accounts. He gets 5 at a time and watches them very quickly, usually when I'm not home. He often doesn't know what's in his envelopes before he opens them. I get one at a time, and often let them sit, despite almost always choosing to put whatever that disc is at the top of the queue. If there's overlap in our selections, we'll often watch those together, of course, but where our schedules overlap we're more likely to watch the DVR.

My DVD queue currently has 436 discs in it, and my instant queue has 98 (several items are in both). I can't imagine ever getting through it all, unless I made a full-time job of it somehow. So that's the background, and where I'm starting from. I'm going to try to do short reviews as I work my way through. Since so many of the movies are old, I'm going to assume you've seen them already if you're interested. That certainly applies to...

The History Boys
The History Boys has been in my queue forever. I never managed to see the play when it was on Broadway and the talk of the town, and then I didn't make it to the movie when it was briefly in theaters, and then it languished in the queue for years, never a high priority. Somehow it came up in conversation with Joe recently and I was severely peer pressured into moving it up in my queue. And why not? Everyone loved the play. I generally like British things. It's full of cute boys (also British things), some of whom went on to do other things I like very much.

And I kind of hated it. For starters, I always find Richard Griffiths kind of creepy, but I can't fault the movie for that. But mostly I just thought it was boring. So, so very boring. I didn't care about anyone. To some extent this is a flaw of watching movies like this at home, where I am easily distracted, but I didn't quite get what they were supposed to be doing in class. I mean, I know that they were preparing for their university entrance exams, but what did Hector teach, exactly?

There's an obvious comparison to Dead Poets Society, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's pure cheese, but it's very active in its inspirationalness. I don't just mean in the running through fields reading poetry way, but in the way the kids actually do things. They're shaken out of their repressive world a little bit. The kids in The History Boys aren't repressed at all. In fact, some of them seem a little too sexually open for the small-town 1980s setting. And they're inspired to...be good test-takers? Interview well? Allow themselves to be groped now and then? I was completely unmoved. I do wonder what I'd have felt if I'd seen it when I was 12 or 13, like Dead Poets, but I didn't, so meh.

I'm told it was much better on stage, but I don't really see how, since at least the film had the benefit of lovely English countryside to look at occasionally. I also have a core problem with the story, in that I don't really think it's okay that Hector touches the kids. Sure, they allow it, and no one is damaged, and they make a big point about how he won't touch the little one because he looks too young, but...it was a strange choice, and I couldn't get behind it...so to speak. And the ending felt totally unearned.

All of that said, Frances de la Tour, who I'd only ever seen in Harry Potter, is absolutely delightful.

Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre: Beauty and the Beast
I don't remember how it came up, but a while back Boy was telling me about his fond childhood memories of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre, an early 80s Showtime anthology series for kids (? pretentious kids, judging by the spellings), starring an insane hodge-podge of 70s and 80s stars. The guests remind me of The Muppet Show – so deeply representative of the time period, with some who went on to become much bigger stars, and some...not so much. Including Shelley herself.

It was the sort of thing that I put in the queue with no real expectation of ever watching. But last weekend I was home alone and had nothing I wanted to watch, and discovered that it had been added to Watch Instantly. And since I had just seen Beastly I was curious to see a more faithful version of "Beauty and the Beast" to see where some of the weirder elements had come from, and neither the Disney nor the Cocteau is in Watch Instantly. It seemed the perfect way to kill an hour.

The episode begins with Shelley Duvall astride a horse, doing a little introductory host bit. And as she says the words, "Beauty...and the Beast," she leans forward so that she's basically lying down on the horse's neck. It's a deeply weird image (of someone who already reads pretty weird) and it sets the tone spectacularly. What follows is 50-or-so minutes of the most plodding children's television I've ever seen. Even by the standards of the time, the pacing is AWFUL. It's so slow and there's so much padding, it makes you realize how little happens in traditional fairy tales and how masterful Disney is at fleshing them out. Beauty and Beast have no arc together beyond she's scared of him, he's nice to her, she's less scared of him, and somehow that ends up in fairy tale love. Even Beastly lets something resembling an actual friendship develop.

But the production values are decent (especially the costumes), and it's really fun to see a barely-post-Rocky Horror Susan Sarandon as Beauty. Yes, her name is actually Beauty. I realize that Belle means Beauty, but this just sounded silly every time they said it. Angelica Houston plays one of her evil sisters, and seems to be in an entirely different movie. Who knew Angelica Houston and Mary Kate Olsen would ever have anything in common? Klaus Kinski plays the Beast in a surprisingly good mask. Near the end they shoot him from a low angle and you can clearly see his upper lip moving under the mask, and it seemed so odd that no one would notice that, especially when it had looked so good (relatively) up until then. Though between his accent and the mask and the bad writing it's often hard to tell exactly what he's saying. He has the reverse problem of Beastly: After he's made human again he's still pretty ugly. When Beauty says, "I'll have to get used to it, I think I preferred the beast," she might not be joking.

Now that it's easy to sample episodes on the Wii, I'm really looking forward to Robin Williams, Terri Garr and Rene Auberjonois in "The Frog Prince," Hervé Villechaize as Rumpelsiltskin (!), Shelley herself as Rapunzel (with Gena Rowlands as the Witch!), Christopher Reeve, Bernadette Peters and Carol Kane in "Sleeping Beauty," Ricky Schroeder as Hansel, Paul Reubens as Pinocchio, and Liza Minnelli in "The Princess and the Pea." There's just too much crazy there not to at least check them out!

Brownies and Social Networking

2011-03-12T10:20:00.001-05:00

You'd never know it from these food posts, but I'm on a diet. But I still love to bake, and I can indulge now and then, but it's important to get it out of the house so I don't, say, eat a dozen cupcakes for breakfast. A few weeks ago the Times ran a recipe for Sea Salt and Olive Oil Brownies, which sounded amazing, and a couple of weeks later a friend was having a party so I decided to make them. I happened to mention this to another friend who was going to the same party, and she said, "Don't do it! We made them last week and they were terrible!" Close call!

But I was still really into the idea of them so I went googling and found these Salted Fudge Brownies.

While the brownies were in the oven I made myself some lunch and bacon was involved. And I tweeted something about how the apartment smelled like both brownies and bacon and it was amazing. This is, frankly, exactly the sort of stupid tweet that people use to make fun of Twitter. No one cares. Except someone did, and she made it awesome. A woman I've become friendly with on Twitter, but have never met and know very little about, replied to me saying that if I liked that, I should try this recipe for Bacon Salted Caramel Brownies. And I did. Almost immediately.

Both brownies were a hit at the party. But for me, the bacon ones were a little too gooey, and there was a bit too much caramel. The salted fudge ones were denser, more fudge-like, and more to my brownie liking.

Fortunately, I had another party to go to the following weekend, so I combined the recipes and came up with this:

Salted Caramel Bacon Brownies
(adapted from Kate Krader, David Lebovitz and Savour Fare)

For the Bacon Caramel:
2 slices bacon
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
6 tbs salted butter (unsalted will work too)

For the Brownies:
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon Maldon sea salt

In a small skillet or saucepan, fry two slices of bacon until crisp. Remove bacon and set aside on paper towels, reserving bacon grease in the pan. Add cream to hot pan and let cool. When bacon is cool, crumble or chop finely.

In a larger pan, heat the sugar over high heat until the mixture is liquid and a deep amber color. Add the butter and the cooled bacon cream all at once, and stir until the butter is melted. Add the chopped bacon and let the mixture cool thoroughly.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly butter a 9"x13" baking pan (the original recipe called for metal, but I used glass with no ill effects).

In a large saucepan, melt the butter with the unsweetened chocolate over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat. Whisking them in one at a time until thoroughly incorporated, add the cocoa, sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour.

Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan. Then drop about half of the bacon caramel, in evenly spaced dollops, over the brownie batter in the pan. Spread the remaining brownie batter over the top, then repeat spooning the caramel. Swirl with a butter knife.

Bake the brownies in the center of the oven for about 35 to 40 minutes, until the edge is set but the center is still a bit soft and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out coated with a little of the batter. (The caramel will be bubbling, so be careful! And don't let it confuse you on your tester.)

Let the brownies cool at room temperature in the pan on a rack until the caramel is cooled but still sticky (about 30 minutes). Sprinkle the Maldon sea salt over the top of the brownies. Let cool for another 30 minutes or so. Cut as you like (they're pretty rich, so I recommend smaller pieces) and remove from pan. Enjoy!

Both times I've made these I've completely forgotten to take a picture, so enraptured was I by the process, and new phrases like "bacon cream." I snapped a quick shot with my phone at the end of last week's party, with three brownies left, but it's not even worth posting. Just make them yourself and see!

No denying she's a funny girl, that Belle

2011-03-11T15:39:00.009-05:00

I saw Beastly last week, and...I kinda liked it! I mean, I didn't expect it to be any good, and it certainly lived down to that expectation. Half the fun was making fun of it with Joe. But the other half was just the movie, in all its ridiculous glory. I can't argue at all with the critics who ripped it apart, but the film was so sincere in its incompetence that I found it oddly endearing. Like, "Aw, honey, that's not where Brooklyn is, but good try sweetheart."

The plot, such as it is, is an update of Beauty and the Beast. Alex Pettyfer plays an obscenely rich private high school student and he's beautiful and a dick and he's especially mean to Mary Kate Olsen so she makes him "ugly," and his dad exiles him (not my word choice, there's a montage set to a song called "In the Garden of Exile" in case we didn't get it) to a gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone with a maid and a blind tutor (Neil Patrick Harris), and Vanessa Hudgens winds up there too (it's not even worth explaining, though to be fair it's almost as nonsensical in the original fairy tale) and Kyle has to make her love him before the year is up or he'll stay like this forever.

So it's ludicrous, obviously, and there are so many more ludicrous details I haven't mentioned (here's one: Kyle builds a greenhouse all by himself, out of old doors and shit, even though until now he's been able to buy anything he wants…like say new lumber). I'm hardly the first to point out that Kyle's "beast" form isn't really all that unattractive. In fact, in certain circles (granted, not ones he'd want to hang out in) he'd be more popular. In close-up it does look worse than it does in the trailers and posters (which I actually think used a different version of the makeup), with weird open wounds and some burn-looking scars, but couldn't they have made him fat or something? I could claim it's a feminist twist on the "pretty ugly girl" trope of teen movies if the plot didn't also hinge on Hudge being an outcast simply because she's poor and brunette. In one of the film's more preposterous moments (a high standard), right after seeing his transformed (kinda) face, Kyle unbuttons his shirt to, I guess, see the extent of the damage? And sure, the scars (and tattoos!) are everywhere, but the pecs and abs are still very much unbeastly. The words "I'd still hit it" may have been uttered in the theater. I guess it's safe to assume that Kyle's new look is...everywhere, but this is a PG movie.

I didn't really mind the lack of ugly, because, well, have you seen Alex Pettyfer? But on a plot level it's deeply weird that Hudge, who both already knows Kyle and has a crush on him even when he's an asshole (deep flaw in the movie's philosophy) doesn't recognize him, or his voice. And I didn't even realize until I looked at that photo that his eyebrows have words on them! Words that he said in front of her and that Mary Kate then grafittied in the school! It's also made clear that his situation is recent, yet at no point does anyone question what horrible accident might have left him so badly scarred and also tattooed. Although, this is a world in which Mary Kate's character is referred to as "the class witch," as if every high school has one. And it doesn't seem like it's a euphemism for "bitch" or shorthand for "freaky goth chick," so maybe this is just a world in which magic exists? And also face transplants? It's also a world in which Brooklyn has a view that belongs in Queens, fancy private high schools are office building lobbies, local news anchors are gajillionaires, Manhattan has dead-end streets (but with a Duane Reade on it so you know it's New York), and Mary Kate Olsen, Vanessa Hudgens and Lisa Gay Hamilton are ugly, so maybe!

Weirdly, Mary Kate is the best thing about this movie. It's not that she's good (she's not, at all), it's that she totally gets it. She sets a camp tone that no one else rises to (to be fair, the script won't let them). And she has the most fabulous Lady Gaga meets Stevie Nicks wardrobe and wigs. Neil Patrick Harris clearly knows what movie he's in, and just kinda goes with it, seemingly having as much fun as he can. Everyone else plays it very straight, which is sort of too bad, but it's also what makes it all funny.

And somehow, it all kinda worked for me. And I clearly wasn't alone. When Hudge looked deep into Kyle's still-pretty eyes, and of course she wasn't going to say "I love you" yet because the movie obviously wasn't over, and she said, "you're a good friend," a group of teenage (I hope?) girls behind us groaned. It was delightful. Joe and I agreed that it was the best moment either of us had shared with a movie audience in a while.

Not one of us doesn't know how this story ends, so why not just have fun with it? I can't say it's worth $12 in the theatre, but if you enjoy fun trash, invite some snarky friends over, have a couple of drinks, and go to town on Netflix. My one regret: That it wasn't a musical. That might have made it the best worst movie ever.

Food!

2011-03-05T15:13:00.003-05:00

Time for the twice-yearly "I'm going to try to blog more" empty promise! I've been getting some nice encouragement on both my writing and my photography from some lovely friends (and have been inspired by the work of those same friends), and I had fun writing that Social Network post. So I'm digging up a couple of posts I started but never finished, and I'm going to work on my follow-through! I want to branch out on topics a bit too, so here's a food post:

For Christmas and Chanukah I received seven new cookbooks. Eight if you count the slow-cooker book I bought myself because I also received a slow-cooker. (Back to seven if you count the one I put on my Amazon wish list in 2003 and forgot about which turned out to suck.) When I asked my mother if she was angling for a dinner invitation or trying to fatten me up for slaughter, she pointed out that everything in front of me (including the slow-cooker) was from my wish list. Fair enough! If I had more time (and more inclination to spend 90 minutes in the kitchen after getting home from work at 7 pm) I'd consider doing a Julie and Julia thing (oh yeah, mom also gave me her old, well-worn copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, so nine if we count that!), simply because there's no way to make all of the recipes in my house right now (which include magazine clippings and web printouts) unless I do one a day maybe until I die. That's not a bad position to be in, really, though it might make my attempts to lose weight an even bigger challenge than they already are!

I had the luxury of being off from work from December 24 to January 2, so I used some of that time (and the excuse of holiday gluttony) to make a dent in a couple of the books. I started ambitiously, with the latest Top Chef book. I love these books. They're part cookbook, part coffee-table-book about the show. So as a fan of both food and reality TV, they really hit my sweet spot. They're also gorgeously designed. So even though I'll probably never even attempt half the recipes (I mean, it's Top Chef, shit gets serious) they're a great read. I got the first two (this one is #3) last Chrismukah, and they actually inspired me to go back and watch the first two seasons of the show, which I'd never seen.

The new book has less on the show (though there's still some good behind-the-scenes insight) and more lessons on technique, which I find super useful since I'm generally more concerned with how things taste than how they look and my knife skills are pretty awful. (Digression and exception: One recipe from the first TC book actually had very specific plating instructions, so I followed them to a T and was damned proud of myself:

I was shocked when I actually got around to watching the episode this came from and discovered it was by dumbass Michael! As I recall, Tom was shocked too.)

Anyway, another nice thing about the new book is that it includes recipes from Top Chef Masters, so there are some serious heavy-weight chefs in there, and that's how I started, with Hubert Keller's macaroni and cheese. Viewers of the show will remember this from the dorm room challenge, and I assume the recipe was modified for the book to make sense in a real kitchen – no shower or microwave involved! There is, however, a whole lot of cholesterol involved! Clearly no one expects mac and cheese to be light and healthy, but honestly, this was a bit much by any standard: It has macaroni (duh), swiss cheese, onion, mushrooms, carrots, two cups of cream, and some half-and-half. Then, you take another cup of cream, whip it, mix in six egg yolks and some parsley (vegetable!) and pour that over the top before baking it. Oh and there's only a cup and a half of cheese. So there's over twice as much cream as cheese, plus all that egg. The end result looked gorgeous, and was certainly tasty, but I wouldn't really call it mac and cheese. It's like mac in cream sauce…with egg? It tasted really eggy. The shrimp is sort of delightful, and neat visually since it's so close in shape and color to the macaroni – it's a nice surprise. The carrot is just weird. I'm a fan of Chef Keller and was super-excited for this recipe (eight new cookbooks and it's the first thing I made!) and Boy and I were both pretty disappointed by it. Looked pretty though (these are not my best photos, sadly):

There was a ton left over (I should've halved the recipe), and when I had some a couple of days later, I added more cheese and crumbled in about a slice and a half of bacon. It was almost perfect! The salty crunchy bacon balanced the sweet soft carrot nicely, and more cheese is always a good thing. Far be it for me to claim to have improved on Chef Keller, but my revision was more to my taste. I polished off the (revised) leftovers but I doubt I'll make this one again.

Next up, also from Top Chef, was Stefan's duck with pretzel dumplings. I hated Stefan on the show, but he had me at duck and further had me at pretzel dumplings. Cabbage is a major component of this dish, and I'm not usually a fan, but I was super-interested in the duck and the dumplings, and I wanted to try the whole recipe as written first. Fortunately the cabbage includes two cups of wine, along with apple, cinnamon, cloves, and more, so it smelled more like mulled cider on the stove than cabbage. The cabbage sits under the duck and the liquid serves as a sauce. It cooks for two hours, and one thing I dislike about the Top Chef books is they don't give you any sort of instructions on how to use your time. If I'd just gone through the whole recipe as written, nothing would have been ready at the right time. Especially annoying in this case since that's so often a big part of the challenges on the show, and we see the chefs making things the day before. Fortunately I figured out that I could start the cabbage, then make and boil the dumplings. In the last 20 minutes or so of cabbage simmering, I started the duck, then fried the dumplings while that roasted and rested.

The dumplings didn't really come together properly, which might have been due to sloppy halving of the recipe on my part (when something calls for 3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg, and you're only making half, you kind of have to wing it). They were very tasty, they just didn't photograph well, and there were some texture issues. Not really what I think of as a dumpling, but yummy anyway. The duck breast was clearly larger than the recipe intended, and I should have rendered the fat for a lot longer (which is clear in the photos!). But where I executed the mac and cheese perfectly but didn't love it, this relative mess of a plate was extremely delicious! It won't replace my favorite duck recipe, but I'll definitely make it again (and try to get those dumplings right!).

The slow-cooker was up next. Before I got the book I went online and found the wonderfully named Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic. There's not much to say about it, really. It wasn't all that exciting but it was as great as everyone says it is to just throw everything in the crock pot and walk away while the apartment starts smelling amazing. The chicken falls right off the bone and while the garlic cloves stay whole, they get so soft that you can spread them on bread like butter (and we did!).

The book I bought myself was Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. It is extensive! I haven't made much from it yet, but I wanted to try chili, for which there are a dozen or so recipes. I went for the one with the least amount of work involved, which had a Sandra Lee "Semi Home Made" quality that I normally hate (jarred salsa was involved) but it turned out pretty great. I served it with some cilantro-lime sour cream (also from the book, which has non-crock pot recipes for sides and things too) and baked potato. I'm really only mentioning it because I want to post this photo:

I'll bring this long post to a close with dessert, which makes sense. Nothing to do with the new books, but also made during Christmas week, and presented with minimal commentary: Apples With Candied Bacon à la Mode:

It's super-easy to make, and such a nice winter treat. I used homemade bourbon ice cream instead of vanilla, which I wholeheartedly recommend if you have access to such things. I imagine chocolate would be great too.

The Social Mehtwork

2011-02-26T11:48:00.006-05:00

As always I'm way behind on movies, and I don't believe in catching up for the Oscars, because I don't believe in watching things just because they're nominated for awards and I'm usually so far behind and watch so much TV that it would be futile anyway. But I was genuinely interested in The Social Network and missed it in theaters, and did make a point of Netflixing it before the Oscars (which I won't be watching because it's the only night I can see a play I want to see, but that’s not really relevant).

So here's the thing: I am an unabashed and unrepentant Aaron Sorkin fan. Even in the darkest hours of Studio 60 I found enjoyment in the clever (if forced) wordplay, the zippy (if artificial) pace, and the generally fantastic (in spite of the material) acting. I am one of a handful of people who both saw and liked The Farnsworth Invention on Broadway. And I don't need to make parenthetical apologies for The West Wing and Sports Night. I totally understand why people don't like him, and I know people who have personal reasons not to, but I'm pretty deep in the tank. That said, it's been impossible to avoid reading about this movie and Sorkin's antiquated views of the Internet in general and Facebook in particular, and about how much of this movie, using the names of real people and marketed as a true story, was completely and totally made up. (Read this. I'll wait.)

So I expected to be conflicted. I figured that taken in a vacuum, as a (fictional) film by a writer I like full of actors I like, I would enjoy it, and I'd be pissed off about it on principle later. I was really wrong on both counts.

First, my backlash to the backlash: There were a couple of cringe-worthy moments but I didn't find it to be nearly so internet-hating as I'd heard. The much-talked-about speech about how bloggers are awful was even worse than I expected, and was so clearly Sorkin airing his personal dirty laundry that it took me out of the movie. There'd also been a lot of talk about the movie's misogyny, but that struck me as more about Zuckerberg and Parker (the characters) than about Sorkin or Fincher. Much is made (so much!) about how these guys are jerks and so their treatment of women (or lack of women who'd be willing to hang out with them) made perfect sense to me. I didn't have a problem with that.

What did piss me off was the last thing I expected: How fucking boring this movie was and how I hated pretty much everyone in it! (And now's a good time to mention that if you follow me on Twitter and were on last night, you've read much of this already...because I was quite bored.) I adore Jesse Eisenberg. So far in his career he's played basically one type of character and I think he's done it very well. Variations on awkward but sweet. It's the sweet that usually comes through and makes him winning. For whatever reason, I felt like all of his natural charm disappeared in this role. Nasty just doesn't sit well on him. True, Zuckerberg (the character...I'll stop doing that) is a total dick, but I have to believe that someone who has gotten to where Zuckerberg (the real person...see, it's useful!) is has some charm in real life (not that his public appearances really back this theory up). And even if he doesn't, the movie version of him has to or I don't want to spend two hours with him. (See also: Extra Hot Great's ongoing discussion of TV jerks.) Full disclosure slash name-drop: I worked on a play with Jesse in 1999, and he was a thoroughly delightful and neurotic 15-year-old who I'm sure doesn't remember me. So maybe my real-life affection for him colors how I feel about watching him play a total douchebag, but regardless I didn't enjoy it. I wish they could have gone back in time and gotten a 25-year-old Bradley Whitford or Josh Charles to play this part.

So right from the first scene I was against this guy, and against this movie. Why is he being so mean? To his girlfriend?! And why was she with him in the first place? It sort of makes no sense that they would ever go out. And it's not like he's Darth Vader; he's not some great villain, he's just a whiny prick (wait, is he Anakin Skywalker?). Sorkin knows how to write an opening scene that grabs you. And he knows how to write people being jerky and likeable at the same time. (Evidence.) So maybe this was Fincher's fault.

Speaking of, there were some batshit directorial choices in this film, starting with that scene, starting with the sound design. As much as I hate when people in movies act like you can talk at a normal volume at a party or a bar, that doesn't mean you have to actually make it difficult for the audience to hear the dialogue in a party or a bar scene. Throughout the movie the sound seemed way off balance, with background noise overpowering the actors. This reached its apex in the club scene with Parker, but I'd already noticed it throughout, especially in the opening. There has to be a line between realism and headache. So anyway, in that first scene I felt like I was straining against the background noise, and against the general dickishness, and it was a terrible way to start that turned me off almost completely.

I say almost, because I had further to go, as this scene was followed immediately by a seemingly endless voiceover about writing code! You know what's more boring than watching people write code? Listening to them narrate it in a monotone! So for a solid twenty minutes or so, I felt assaulted by this movie. It did get better, once the "action" ramped up in the second half. But I was consistently at a low level of either boredom or aggravation throughout.

Much has been made about how good Andrew Garfield is. And he is good. And adorable. But you guys...that accent? Every time he opened his mouth all I could think about was Christian Bale in Newsies. This is a particular bugaboo of mine. I don’t like this trend of British actors playing Americans, not because "they're taking our jobs," but because their accents are so often so terrible. I could barely get through Batman Begins (not to harp on Christian Bale – prizes go to pretty much the entire cast there). I really hope they get a better dialect coach for Spider-Man because he looks really good in that suit and I really really want to like him. (And yes, I'm sure it's just as bad for Brits listening to American actors play them.)

I'd heard all about the heinous snow and "cold breath" effects, and I have nothing to add to that conversation except that it was even worse than I imagined. It's a movie set in the relative present, at a real place, shot (I think?) at that real place. I should not have to suspend my disbelief for the special effects. (I also found the twins creepy, but I think that was only because I knew what was happening, not because of flaws in the effect.)

And can we talk about that regatta on the Thames scene? John (with whom I was IMing while I watched and who encouraged me to write this post…so, blame him) told me that it was on a bunch of critics' best-of-the-year lists. Um, why? It wasn't even a scene so much as a 2+ minute establishing shot. We get it, they're at a race in London. If it seems a strange thing for me to devote a whole paragraph to, consider that this is a movie with pacing problems, and this was around the point where the "action" was gearing up and I was starting to get into it a little bit. And then everything stopped dead in its tracks for no good reason so we could watch rowing. Also, it was bafflingly scored with "In The Hall of the Mountain King" played on a Casio keyboard from the 80s. Huh?

But enough nitpicking. I just felt the movie was deeply confused. It's clearly about Zuckerberg, but it's also clear that Sorkin and Fincher sort of hate him. And that's fine, there can be an anti-hero protagonist. But it also seems like they hate everyone else. Even the ex-girlfriend, who is obviously the Sorkin stand-in, is kind of a pill. Is Zuckerberg the hero and the Winkelvii the villains (see above re: "In The Hall of the Mountain King")? There's clearly some admiration for what he accomplished. Whatever you think of Facebook, the kid's a millionaire and the site's place in the culture is undeniable. But this undercurrent of contempt for all the characters – and Harvard, and Silicon Valley – was equally undeniable and completely off-putting. When Eduardo barks at Zuckerberg, "You pretentious douchebag!" I couldn't help but laugh because it could have applied to anyone in the movie - and Sorkin and Fincher.

Where was that crackling Sorkin dialogue that I love? There were good lines here and there, but very few and far between. This was such a sub-par effort from him, and he'll probably win an Oscar tomorrow. The plus side of his personal views always coming through in his scripts is the way the characters who speak for him are usually passionate, and that passion comes through with wit and energy. Was the lackluster dialogue here a result of him not identifying with the characters? Was it Fincher's fault? The cast's? (I found it interesting that there wasn't a single member of the "Aaron Sorkin Players" in the film, even in one of the small roles for people over 30.) It's entirely possible that this is a matter of inflated expectations, but I found the whole thing to be incredibly flat, and my biggest takeaway from the movie is that I found it mostly very very dull.

Okay, and one more nitpick? In the "where are they nows" at the end of the movie, they say that Eduardo's name was "returned to the masthead." Dude, I know you hate the internet but did you even look at Facebook while you were writing the script? Facebook doesn't have a masthead. Seriously, I checked. Do websites even have mastheads? Does Aaron Sorkin think websites are newspapers?

Okay, I'm done. Bottom line: BORED. Also I should probably not wait so long before seeing big, hyped movies. I am almost always backlashy about them. Damn my contrarian nature!

Side note: We also watched Catfish this week, and while I found that disappointing and dull too (again, hype), it's a far more interesting and accurate look at social media and online relationships than The Social Network could ever hope to be. While I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as a film, if these are things that interest you you should definitely see it.

2011-01-11T11:23:00.003-05:00

In reference to the Arizona shooting, someone somewhere on FaceTwit said something to the effect of "This sort of thing happens all the time, just not usually to VIPs." That made me think of this:

Yes, Aaron Sorkin is smug and one-sided and doesn't understand how the internet works, but I still frequently wish we could have a real-life administration like this one. I guess I'm okay with smug as long as I agree with it!

UPDATED: Later in the day, Tara shared this: How To Buy A Gun In Canada And Other Rational Things, which is also awfully good.

Does Whatever A Spider Can

2011-01-09T22:40:00.005-05:00

As I alluded to before, Boy and I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark earlier this week. I won't review it, both because I don't do that here and because (say it with me, and half the press most people don't care about) it's not open yet, but I will say that my expectations were 100% met. I guess that's a bit of damning with faint praise, given the press so far, so I'll say a bit more: that as a theatre tech nerd and a puppetry nerd, I was beyond satisfied. Leaving aside the script and score (please!), cool shit just kept happening! The flying has gotten all the press, but I was way more impressed by the sets and costumes, and particularly by the simpler tricks and illusions. Most of them required some seriously high-tech mechanics to make them work, but the effects were striking. (Jump to 3:40 in this for a quick glimpse of my favorite thing in the show.)

For a full-on review, with a pretty spoilerific blow-by-blow, I can't recommend this piece by Isaac Butler strongly enough. I can't argue with a single thing Isaac says on its merits, except that we obviously had completely different experiences at the show (in that I enjoyed it and he sounds like he wanted to kill himself).

I'm pretty sick of all the overload (I'm curious – if you're outside of New York or outside of the theater business, has this made any impression on you at all?), but since my last post there have been some things worth linking to. So here they are:

Even though I think everone should back off, this take from The Onion was my favorite.

A fun (?) piece from TDF about stage injuries and onstage and backstage dangers, which backs up a lot of what I said in my last post.

An interview with Tierney, who among other things talks about the dangers of dancing: "I’ve been in shows with people whose legs pop out of their hips. An ex-girlfriend of mine has four concussions. People tearing their A.C.L. And for a show that’s this technically complex, four injured performers is just not strange."

NY Times theater critic Charles Isherwood on the whole to-review-or-not-to-review thing. And a similar piece from NY Magazine's Vulture blog. And one by the mother of one of my friends in the cast! Somewhere, after a couple of reviews did appear (in major old-school publications – not to discount the online people, but the rules do seem different), I saw a count of the actual number of previews the show had had. Because they were never scheduled to do a full 8 shows a week during previews (which is not usual), they hadn't actually done all that many more than a typical show. It just felt like forever.

And finally, a reward if you're still reading: I found all of Fool's Fire, the film I linked to a terrible clip of last time. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, and it's been many many years, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that it's still awesome. Part 1 below. Click through for the rest.

Gee, do you think this movie is about duality?

2010-12-28T10:51:00.000-05:00

Everyone's been spoojing all over Black Swan, and I was super excited for it myself based on the trailer alone. I finally saw it last night and I was pretty meh about it. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but I didn't think it was actually a good movie. And the last five minutes pretty much ruined the whole thing for me. Spoilers ahead.

First, the good: I thought the performances were all fantastic, including Natalie Portman, who I've never liked much (I think I'm coming around on that though), and delightful, underused Winona Ryder. Even better is the art direction and costume design. SA commented on the way out that it felt very believably New Yorky, and I agree. Nina's apartment was completely realistic for the location and likely household budget, while also being creepy and claustrophobic. The costumes and visual effects are gorgeous. The oppressive, cinderblock world of the theater was great, and made me feel bad for whoever has to actually work in that location all the time. But I loved how it captured the real lack of glamour that often lives behind the scenes, even if it was a little over-the-top because they were also going for the whole psychological oppression thing. I actually liked how the dancers' world was portrayed in general, despite how little dancing there actually was for an ostensible dance movie. Except for crazy Nina, the theater looked pretty much like a regular workplace. Everyone shows up, does their job, goes home. They have friends, they gossip, they don't take it too seriously. You get a sense that all those people in the background have lives, and just happen to have an unusual job. I feel like that's often missing from backstage dramas. I especially liked the little moments with the physical therapist and the wardrobe supervisor, which didn't even feel scripted.

But that sense of lightness is absent from most of the movie. Okay, it's a psychological thriller, it shouldn't be light, but did it need to be so goddamn pretentious? Look, a reflective surface! The film could have been campy fun, but it's too busy taking itself so very seriously to let us laugh. But I didn't think it was good enough to justify all that heaviness. The people behind Burlesque set out to make a new camp classic, and wound up making a halfway decent movie by accident. The result was a film that was neither good enough to be good, nor bad enough to be funny. I felt similarly about Black Swan, but in reverse. They tried to make something artsy and deep, and didn't quite make it, but sucked all the fun out along the way. I think I had a better time at Burlesque.

Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy Black Swan. I did! Nina's transformation scenes were wonderfully creepy and cringe-inducing (in a good way), and her descent into madness was completely believable even though it was also completely absurd. The sequence where she turns into a swan onstage was one of the most beautiful things I've seen on screen in a long time. But it's really because of all that that I think the end of the movie left such a bad taste in my mouth, because in a pretty tightly-constructed world, where the lines of reality and madness were, if not exactly clearly drawn, drawn in a way that felt believable for Nina's experience, the final twist made not one bit of sense.

(Seriously, major spoilers.) So Nina performs an act of Swan Lake, then stabs Mila Kunis with a shard of mirror (never mind how she has time to hide the body and do a full makeup and costume change during a 15-minute intermission; that I can forgive), then performs act two, then finds out she didn't really stab Mila Kunis but actually stabbed herself (and she has, at some point, put back on the very white costume she supposedly stabbed herself in, then took off), pulls the mirror bit from her body and her white white costume, and dances a whole other act before a) dying and b) anyone notices she is bleeding all over the place. HUH??? Look, this girl has been hallucinating for days. I'm totally down with all of this stabbing being completely psychological. And a final reveal that the blood wasn't real and she just died of craziness (or, better yet, jumped off the thing and deliberately missed the crash pad) would have been all I needed to make the ending work.

Writing it out like that I think maybe it wasn't supposed to be real, but we do consistently see the blood in shots from other people's point of view, including at the very end, which hadn't been the convention of the movie until then. It was sloppy, and it made me leave the theater with a bad taste for the whole thing. The deeply pretentious credits ("Beth Macintyre/The Aging Swan" WE GET IT) were the final blow.

But, y'know, going through it now I think maybe I need to give it another chance on DVD. Maybe it's one of those movies that gets better on repeat viewings, when you know all the twists and can look for the clues. And enough people whose opinions I trust really really like it. On the other hand, my favorite professional movie critic, Slate's Dana Stevens, agrees with me pretty completely, so I'll leave you with a link to her. The review is good, the podcast is even better.

The Hidden Dangers of Musical Theater

2010-12-24T09:55:00.000-05:00

With Monday's news about a fourth show-stopping injury at Spider-Man, and all the attendant press and snark (my favorite comment, from JeffMacIsHere on Twitter: "I think it's time the producers of the Spiderman musical just go ahead and let Christine Daae play Spiderman."), my own feelings about the show have been swinging more wildly than a high school Peter Pan, and I keep thinking about one story in particular from early in my now-defunct stage management career. It filled my head enough that I decided to break my rule about blogging about theater. Hey, at least it's got me writing!

One of my first jobs was as a production assistant (a low-level member of the stage management team) on a technically complex Broadway show. At one point, after a scene change, the lights came up on an actor alone onstage. After a moment, another actor emerged from underneath the first one's elaborate costume. (I could explain why this was, but we'd be here for days.) The actors entered in a blackout, the second one crawling under the costume of the first, at the same time as a huge, heavy, automated wall flew in behind them. At our second preview, they were just a few inches too far upstage, and the wall landed on top of the costume and kept moving, wedging the crawling actor's head between it and the floor, before being stopped and reversed.

I didn't see any of this happen. PAs aren't on union contracts, and so aren't allowed to run shows on Broadway. They're mostly rehearsal assistants, but stay on through previews to help with those rehearsals, finish paperwork, etc. What I remember most about that day is how exhausted I was. It was our last day before a day off after two weeks of 12-hour tech rehearsals. We'd had our first preview the night before, then come in for two hours of morning rehearsal before this matinee. Everyone was kind of a wreck. I didn't have anything to do during the show that day, so I was half-asleep in the office, wearing a headset in case anyone needed me, and suddenly I heard the voice of the head carpenter in my ear screaming "Take it out, take it out, take it out!" and I ran to the stage.

I don't remember what happened next, but I do remember being out on the sidewalk, still wearing my headset and holding the cordless phone from the office, waiting to meet the paramedics and lead them in through the stage door. The headset was out of range, but it helped signal to the thousand or so audience members on the street that I worked there and please get out of my way. It also signaled this to a reporter who happened to be there to interview one of the actors after the show. I don't remember saying anything I shouldn't have, but I do remember being slightly terrified and looking around for our press agent.

The ambulance came and went, and I got in a cab to follow it. The stage managers stayed at the theater with the director to rehearse the understudy, and company management had to deal with all the patrons who didn't get to see the show, which meant lowly I was the only member of the management staff at the ER for a while. The rest of the cast was released and most of them showed up. It's not like in the movies where everyone is still wearing their costume and make-up, but it was definitely a strange waiting room to be in. And even though I'd had nothing to do with the accident personally, I remember how awful the whole thing felt for all of us. If any of us threw any blame around, it was only about how tired everyone was. No one got mad at the set, or the crew, or even at the director who'd worked us so hard (okay, maybe a little).

The accident had been the result of several little mistakes, most of which were only apparent in hindsight. The actors were in the wrong place. The furniture that was set at the same time as their entrance was in the wrong place too. The stage manager was watching on an infrared (night vision) monitor, but those have poor depth of field, so she couldn't tell anything was wrong until it was happening.

In the end, the actor was fine – lucky the wall stopped when it did, and with a mild concussion, but fine – and we took our scheduled day off and came back to work on Tuesday. The first order of business at that rehearsal was changing the transition where the accident had happened. The changes were small. The entrance was moved downstage a bit. The spike marks for the sofa were changed, and the actors now followed the crew on with it, and used it as a guide. A second infrared camera had been installed with an overhead/side view so the stage manager could see better. SMs and crew watched from either side of the stage.

I can't think of a single show I worked on later where there wasn't at least one odd cue that was in place because something had gone wrong once. From watching moving scenery that has no reason to fail but once did so we always make sure, to checking an actor's fly before he goes onstage, because there was this one time.... You prepare for as much as you can, but sometimes the mistake has to happen so you know it's even possible, and then you know how to prevent it.

Theaters are dangerous places. It's easy to forget that, since acting isn't brain surgery or firefighting, and if it's being done right it should look effortless to the audience. But big musicals are full of moving scenery and trap doors and lots of people in tight spaces in the dark. I've worked on small shows that were arguably more dangerous, since lack of space and technology meant lots of unique storage solutions, heavy lifting, and cramped quarters. There can be swords or guns or pyro or even just the fact that the act of pretending to be someone else sometimes takes you out of yourself enough to do something clumsy. Or you just happen to do something clumsy because we all do sometimes, only 1,000 people are watching.

And then there are dancers! People who willingly do crazy things with their bodies eight times a week. (See also, acrobats, athletes and circus people). Movements that might not be dangerous on their own can take a huge toll when combined with others and repeated over and over again. Choreography could be adjusted but usually isn't. But those injuries don't make the press, and no one goes on Twitter calling for the shutdown of the show. It's just the job, and there's a culture of sucking it up. What I did for love, and all that.

So I've been trying hard not to judge the Spider-Man situation too much. I have no idea what it's like in that theater, and I know from experience not to trust all the press reports and certainly not those audience eyewitness accounts of Monday's accident. They've been under such scrutiny from the day the show was announced, which adds to the swirl of emotions within the theater community, I think. There's a wish that Broadway would get this amount (though not this kind) of attention all the time. There's a lament that within the community we're so quick to jump bitchily on splashy failures or movie star stunt casting, but we're not equally vocal about supporting lesser-known shows that we love. That's a really good point. But it's wrapped up in the gripe that theater producers (commercial ones, especially) don't take enough risks, and what could be riskier than Spider-Man? I know they mean artistic risks like The Scottsboro Boys and Next to Normal, but why not also create a big spectacle the likes of which no one has ever seen before? One that will employ hundreds of people, and bring thousands of tourists to a Broadway show? The odds are so against them ever making their money back, even if no one had been injured and the show is a hit, I have to believe that there was once some real belief in the project, and in the joy of creating something wildly imaginative and special. That it appears not to have turned out to be that is unfortunate, but it's not like Julie Taymor is some hack without any artistic cred. This show is an artistic risk. You can't argue that it's not something new.

The economics of Broadway are simple, in that they are generally bad. Unlike a film, which pretty much costs what it costs once, and can be shown many times a day on many many screens and then move on to DVD, a live show can only go up eight times a week, in one place with only so many seats, and continues to incur costs every week. So the odds of making back your initial investment are generally against you. That's not to say that it's all for love and no one ever gets rich doing it, but in a world of gambles this one seems a little bit insane. So even without U2 or Julie Taymor or the accidents, this thing was always going to be a major story. It's the Titanic of musicals (which, oddly, wasn't Titanic: The Musical) and look how that turned out in the end.

The sad truth is that no matter how worked up we theater people may get about a show we love, the national press only cares about this story because of the apparent hubris behind the show and the potential for disaster. All the good vibes in the world won't make them report on a little show that most of the country won't even get an opportunity to see. I kind of wonder if most of the people who hear about Spider-Man care, even now. Living in the bubble of New York and the theater world, we can't get enough. Do most people skip over these stories like I do with sports news?

I, for one, was really looking forward to Spider-Man. I've been a Julie Taymor fan since long before The Lion King (this makes absolutely no sense out of context but it's the only clip I can find), and as much as I love serious musicals, I also love a good spectacle, and a good time. I also think a diverse season is good for the business, and I love to see giant touristy shows like this alongside smaller, "deeper" fare. Something for everyone. If it brings people to the city, or gives kids their first live theater experience, or employs my friends, I don't have to like it. Not that I've never made a snarky comment or six about a crappy show, but in the end I'm glad they're there. (For a great look at a particularly odd season, check out Show Business: The Road to Broadway.)

So I want to be supportive and not judgey since I don't know the whole story and I know if I worked there I wouldn't want to hear it. But I also know people in the show and I don't want them to get hurt. And when I read things like this (again, with a grain of salt), I have to wonder what they were thinking. Really? There was no verbal verification of being hooked in? I learned that at summer camp when I was 12.

To their credit, the folks at Spider-Man don't seem to have made the same mistake twice. But on most shows those mistakes don't involve falling 30 feet or more. I keep thinking about the exhaustion factor. The show has been in tech and previews for weeks now. Everyone is working incredibly long days at a physically demanding job. The technology might be safe, and the procedures might make perfect sense, but that environment can't be helpful. Again, I have no way of knowing this. I haven't seen their schedule. But remembering my own experience, which is nothing compared to this (well, the concussed actor might disagree), it's the thing I keep coming back to.

So I wish them well, in every sense. The show employs a lot of people, so I want it to run for a very long time. I want it to be a happy and safe workplace. I've paid for a ticket, so I want it to be entertaining. Lots of other people have paid for tickets, and I suspect for many it will be their first Broadway show, so I'd like it to stop being a punch line (as funny as those Conan sketches are, they're not exactly making the case for musical theater as a viable art form). Most of all, of course, I don't want anyone else to get hurt. I feel bad for the company having to go through this. I feel a little bad even writing about it, and contributing to the glut out there, but I guess I wanted more than 140 characters for a change.

And if the show runs, and tons of people come here to see the spectacle, I hope they see a smaller show the next night. The tickets even cost less! It will be totally worth your while.

I leave you with this, which is unfair, but so ridiculous that it shouldn't count:

On Facebook

2010-10-29T20:29:00.002-04:00

This is another one of those posts I started forever ago and didn't finish and then it wasn't timely anymore. And then The Social Network came out and I still didn't finish it because really, what could I add to all that that would be of any interest? But then the other day I saw this on The Joy of Tech and then today Lifehacker had this ridiculous poll: "Is Facebook Evil?" As of this writing, I was one of only 7.37% of people who voted "No," with a whopping 51.65% picking "Yes." The other choices are "A little," and "Only where my privacy is concerned."

This makes me inexplicably mad. Inexplicable because I have no ties to Facebook and no particular reason to care about what people think of it, and it's a huge corporation that I suspect in my heart probably is a little bit evil. But all this "Facebook stole my privacy" nonsense just rubs me the wrong way, and always has, because I don't understand how anyone can really complain about a lack of privacy over things that they share on the internet. If I stood on a soap box in Times Square and shouted out status updates, people would think I was crazy. If I handed out photos of myself drunk at a party while I did it, no one would accuse the people who took those photos from me of invading my privacy. But somehow the internet makes doing basically the same thing eeeeevillllll, and also somehow not my fault.

I'm not saying Facebook hasn't done some iffy things. They don't communicate changes in policy or interface well enough. Or at all. That thing where going to certain sites installs, without your permission or even knowledge, an app in your Facebook account and we're not even sure why or what they do was deeply fucking shady. (Is that still around? It hardly got any press in the first place.) It's one thing for Facebook to do stuff with the information I share, but I do not want them monitoring my web traffic just for the hell of it unless I tell them they can. Mark Zuckerberg seems like kind of a dick (and I wrote this part months ago, so I'm not basing that on The Social Network's characterization at all.) I think he's a good case for why not a lot of 25-year-olds run multi-million dollar companies. Not that the experienced guys do it so well all the time, but there is a maturity thing. I won't be at all surprised if he brings about the Sontaran invasion of Earth. It would be nice if stricter privacy settings were opt-out instead of opt-in.

But also... I kind of see his point that the site is pointless without openness. Have you ever tried to look for a friend with a common name, only to find a completely blocked profile? If you don't share at least one photo or where you went to school or your birthday with everyone, your actual friends can't find you, and then why are you on Facebook at all?

Maybe I have the wrong perspective on this, seeing as how I'm making this argument from a blog, which I will later link to on Facebook and Twitter. I am clearly one of those self-absorbed over-sharers Aaron Sorkin hates. But I take responsibility for that. If I share things on the internet, they are inherently not private. That's actually the definition of sharing. Even if I never touched my privacy settings (which really aren't that hard to find or understand, but that's another story), I have control over my Facebook profile. There's no law that says I have to put my age, or my workplace, or post a photo, or update my status. I could easily use it to keep in touch with friends without sharing a thing.

It's true that there's some expectation on Facebook that you're only sharing with your friends and not the whole world. But, hello, duh, the internet. As Failbook proves, we all have "friends" who will happily take a screenshot at our expense. Anyone can tag a photo of you (I do wish they let you approve photos tagged by others before they go live, instead of just removing the tags after the fact). My boss isn't on Facebook, and professional colleagues who are not also non-work friends are blocked from much of my profile, but I would never write "I hate my boss" on Facebook. Because someone will see and it could get back to her. (I don't hate my boss, my boss is awesome, it's just a very commonly used example!)

A few months ago people were complaining about those "Like" buttons popping up on other websites, as if Facebook was somehow following them around. Even NPR anchors were acting like Facebook is somehow psychic. "It knows what I'm doing! It's Big Brother!" You share links on Facebook all the time, so what's the difference? Um, just because the button is there doesn't mean you have to click on it. No one is forcing you to "Like" anything.

People also seem to forget that Facebook is free, and yet we expect them to never go down, and to store all of our photos and everything else. How we've become a society that doesn't want to pay for anything is a topic for another, even more Andy Rooney-ish post, but I have to wonder why people are surprised or upset by targeted ads or anything else Facbook does to try to actually make money, as if that were so insane. And again, if you don't like it, why are you on the site? I bet most of those people who said Facebook is evil in that poll have accounts.

Look, people are stupid, and I just don't see how that's Facebook's fault. Our proverbial kids are going to be online whether we want them to or not. We need to be raising responsible users, just like we need to be teaching them about sex, or money, or generally not to be idiots. But we adults need to take responsibility for our own actions, and not act all surprised when (it's worth saying again) something we share on the internet winds up on the internet.

A Year in Pictures

2010-09-12T21:19:00.003-04:00

Last summer, my friend Dave proposed a photo group. Anyone who wanted to join would take a photo every day for a year, from September 1, 2009 through August 31, 2010, and post it on Flickr. Dave's a pretty popular blogger and twitterer, so he attracted a pretty far-flung group of mostly strangers. Well, strangers to me, I suppose it's possible he knew all of them, but I don't think so. I knew a few of them in real life before we started, and met a couple more on a photo-taking trip to Roosevelt Island (I wish we'd done more of those), but mostly I spent a year communicating with these people through photos and the occasional comment. It was fun to see different people's approaches to the project, and get this weird peek into their lives. We did some theme days here and there, but there was no structure to the project, which was nice. One woman took a picture of her baby every day. Lots of us cooked a lot. I saw some beautiful sunsets and sunrises.

I've always liked taking photos, though I'm no expert and have no desire to be one. I think I have a pretty good eye, and I like the results I get with my little Sony point-and-shoot. I always say I should carry my camera with me more, but I never did it. I liked having a bit of structure to my photo-taking, though some days (especially near the end), it started to feel like homework I didn't want to do. It's a cliché, but it changed the way I looked at things. I looked up more, I noticed more things around me.

I think I only missed one day outright. I will admit I missed some other days but I posted photos from other days to make up for them. Yes, it's cheating, shut up! Considering how many people didn't make it through the year, I feel fine about my occasional reinterpretation of the rules. And for all the days when I took a hasty picture of the cat before bed, there were days when I took many photos and had a hard time deciding which one to post. Which explains why the final set has 372 pictures in it. (Two also got eaten in a weird iPhoto/Flickr sync glitch, mysteriously gone from both forever.)

With the year over, I made a list of what I thought were the trends (and one deliberate anti-trend) in my pictures. Today, as I counted, was the first time I'd sat and gone through all 365 (um, 372) photos. They form a neat little visual diary. There were a bunch I'd completely forgotten about. Most of the trends I identified were spot on, though some of the numbers were higher or lower than I expected, and as I looked I found a few more patterns. Some of my categories are a little arbitrary and so is my counting. But it seemed like a fun way to share some of my favorites here. (Click a photo to view full-size.)

Photos of the cat: 27

I thought there'd be way more of these!
Photos of food (or drink): 60
Photos of or taken from subways and subway stations: 31

I thought there were more of these too!
Photos of the NYC skyline or major landmarks: 28
- Of those, photos of the Empire State Building: 10
  
  Not nearly enough of the Chrysler Building, which is actually my favorite, but I work really close to the ESB.
Photos taken outside of NYC: 43

This one surprised me too. I didn’t realize I'd spent so many days out of town!
- Of those, photos taken outside of the US: 5
Photos with people as the subject: 5

(Okay, the weird-ass giant banana is really the subject of the second one.)
Photos of ruined, crumbling or abandoned things: 9
Attempted "artsy" close-ups of objects (not including food and cat porn above): 36
Photos in or out the windows of my office: 18
Photos of or out the windows of my apartment (where you can really see the apartment, so again not the food or cat porn – this was a weak category to choose!): 17
Photos taken at work events: 4
Photos of or in theatres: 14
Photos taken into the sun: 16

I thought there would be more of these. This is definitely a visual tick that I have.
Photos of screens: 9
Jokes or Puns: 5 (Mouse-over for captions)
Photos taken with my phone: 6
Photos I don't like: 12 (Pretty good, out of 372!)

And here are some more I really like that don't match any of the categories above:

Here's the whole set.

This was fun. Thanks to Dave and to everyone else in the group. One of the things I'd like to do as I try to blog more is post more photos (not quite this many!), so I'm hoping to keep carrying my camera and taking more pics. Just probably not every day.

Staycation: You're Doing It Right

2010-08-29T14:30:00.004-04:00

"Staycation" is one of those neologisms that rubs me the wrong way and makes me cringe, visibly, rudely, at parties. And yet when Boy and I decided to take one (a stay-at-home vacation, not a neologism), I started not just saying it but embracing it. We're staying! And 'cationing!

We'd had dates picked out for some time off for weeks, with Boy completely done with grad school classes (woohoo!), and me in the calm before my office's fall events, but we couldn't find anywhere to go. We didn't want a big vacation, just a little chill time away, and everything we looked at was either too expensive, or too far, or we were just meh about it.

Then, the revelation: We live in New York City! And there are all kinds of things to do here that we never do! The key to making this work, for me anyway, was planning things so that we didn't just sit on the couch for five days. We'd planned to take a vacation, so let's spend some vacation money here in town – make some dinner reservations, schedule our days as if we were on a trip. We didn't have a complete agenda, but all but one day had at least one thing booked to ensure we'd leave the house.

We kicked things off on Friday after work at WD-50, Wylie Dufresne's restaurant on the Lower East Side. We’d become fans of Dufresne when he appeared as a guest judge on Top Chef and a contestant on Top Chef Masters. He's one of those "molecular gastronomy" guys with the freeze-drying and the liquid nitrogen and the food that's very pretty and fun to watch on TV, but possibly a little scary to actually eat. So the restaurant had been on our list but we hadn't rushed to have a more-expensive-than-usual (but quite reasonable for a nice night out), possibly frightening dinner in a neighborhood we never have any other reason to go to. It was a perfect adventure to start the Staycation!

We were seated about as far from the open kitchen as possible, but we did catch sight of Dufresne in there, which made me happy; you don't necessarily expect to actually see the celebrity chef in an apron.

The menu just lists things in the dishes, without much detail or mention of technique. This was sort of disappointing, since I'd've liked some insight into Dufresne's mad scientist ways that went into what I was eating, but also kind of great, because it kept the mystery and magic in it. Of course I took photos. I'll just say now that everything was amazing so as not to keep repeating myself later. (For all photos, click to view on Flickr in various sizes, plus lots more pics.)

Boy started with the "Peekytoe crab roll, salt ‘n vinegar chips, celery mayonnaise." I don't normally like celery and the mayo looked very green with it, but it had a great subtle flavor that was perfect with the crab. I had "Cold fried chicken, buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco, caviar." This is one I'd love to know the technique behind. I assume it wasn't just fried chicken from yesterday left in the fridge. Liquid nitrogen maybe? The meat had a funny but not at all unpleasant texture. I think the waiter mentioned honey as he set the plate down (oddly, our main waiter spoke perfect English, but both of the guys who brought out the food, who also explained it, had thick accents), so I think that's honey-Tabasco sauce underneath. Everything went together perfectly: the salty of the caviar, creaminess of the cheese, sweet-spicy of the sauce, all complimenting the chicken.

Our mains were "Venison chop, freeze dried polenta, fennel, asian pear" for Boy and "Duck breast, apple, cheddar, kimchee-cous cous" for me. These were both a little more "normal," but with some flavor combinations I certainly would never have thought of, like the cheddar (which also flavored the broth in the dish, so it touched everything) with duck and cous cous. I think the polenta was fried after it was freeze dried? Also venison isn't something you see in Manhattan restaurants every day. At least not the ones I go to.

My dessert was "Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate, chicory." The chicory was in the form of a foam, which has a texture I don't care for. When I tasted it by itself it was a flavor I didn't care for either. Mixed with the other flavors, though, it was perfection. Science! Boy had "Cheesecake, wild blueberries, plantain, cinnamon," which was by far the most Dufresne-esque thing we tried. And also, for me, the least successful. But look at it! Little cheesecake bits wrapped in blueberry...something! How the hell did they do that? The blueberry whateveritwas had a gummy texture I didn't like, but Boy enjoyed it and it was his dessert, so the evening was an unqualified success. Highly recommended.

Saturday was pretty much just a regular Saturday. Laundry wasn't going to do itself! After a mostly lazy day we headed to the Riverview Restaurant in Long Island City. Turns out you can't actually view the river from it. Nothing as exciting as Friday's foodie escapade, but my appetizer, "crispy tuna" with ginger was an unusual presentation I'd never seen before. Interesting that the best thing we ate was Japanese-inspired on a mostly Italian menu, but whatever.

The evening was a hit, though, because the weather was perfect and breezy and a much-needed break from this hateful summer. We sat outside and afterwards walked across the street to the Gantry Park to actually see the river.

Queens adventures continued in the other direction on Sunday with a trip to Flushing Meadows Park, better known as the site of the 1964 World's Fair. Back when I was trying to learn to rollerblade (a pursuit I've long since given up), Boy and I took several trips there (it's flat and full of long straight stretches and big wide circles), but we'd never been inside any of the handful of attractions there. I didn't even know there was a zoo until recently (it's on the other side of the highway, where we hadn't ventured).

We started at the New York Hall of Science. We're clearly not the target demographic, but I was happy that we weren't the only childless adults there, and lots of the hands-on stuff (giant bubbles!) was fun for us too. Unfortunately, the Great Hall, which is one of the original World's Fair buildings and made me think of Battlestar Galactica (it's the brown wavy thing behind the 2nd rocket in the photo), was closed for renovations. The whole place felt a little run down, which except for the freshly-renovated globe fountain, is kind of a theme for the entire park.

Next up was the Queens Museum of Art, an original Fair building which hasn't been kept up well at all. Whole sections of it are closed and from the outside appear to be totally falling apart. It's an aesthetic I like taking pictures of but it doesn't make for much of a museum! It's best known for The Panorama, built for the World's Fair when the building was the Hall of New York City. It's a perfect scale model of ALL of New York City, and it's pretty intense. I found my mom's building, my office, and my high school. My current apartment was too far away from the catwalk around the model to get a good look at, but we found the neighborhood. The Panorama has been updated since '64, but I'm guessing not since sometime in the late 70s or early 80s. The World Trade Center is in it, but lots of buildings that were built after it aren't (to say nothing of the obvious). I hope they do another update someday.

There's not much else there, but there is a great collection of World's Fair memorabilia that's fantastically retro-futurist and Mad Men-y, and we bought a poster in the gift shop.

Our last stop was the Queens Zoo, which is like the Bronx Zoo in miniature. It also has an original World's Fair building, which is now a really cool aviary, and a petting zoo. It's sort of strangely designed, with very few vantage points for viewing the animals, but seemingly lots of places to hide. A good time though. Sadly my camera battery died before I could get a picture of the Urdu, the "smallest deer in the world." That thing was CUTE.

After a nap back at home, we hit Urubamba, a Peruvian restaurant around the corner I've always been intimidated by. Living in a largely immigrant neighborhood, there are a few stores and restaurants around where I don't feel entirely welcome. I'll own the fact that that's probably more about my own prejudices than about reality, but the feeling is still there. As it turns out, I needn't have worried about Urubamba, which is not only fun to say out loud, it was full of non-Spanish-speakers. And the food was delicious. Another unusual appetizer: "Crispy mashed potato." Sort of a knish crossed with a meat pie. Another culinary adventure, much cheaper and closer to home.

The Staycation was clearly becoming about food, and Monday turned into Carb Day. It was the one day we hadn't made any plans at all for, though we had some ideas. After walking around so much in Flushing we weren't up for a big day trip or another museum (one of the things Staycation has over Vacation is not feeling like you're wasting your trip if you have a lazy day). Tara wanted to try the Wafels & Dinges truck, which was parked in her neighborhood, and asked if we wanted to join her. This seemed like a perfect Staycation activity! So after bagels for breakfast, we had Belgian waffles for lunch. Mine had bacon in it, and maple syrup and ice cream on it. And it was perfection. This is the only photo I took this day!

We'd planned to see a movie but couldn't really decide what. It was between Toy Story 3 and The Kids Are All Right with some Scott Pilgrim thrown in. We didn't feel like rushing anywhere so we hung out with Tara for a while and meandered down to 42nd Street, and when we got there we needed air conditioning and the only thing starting any time soon was Salt. Which turned out to be a pretty perfect brainless summer movie, and surprisingly a ton of fun. Also it turns out we dodged a bullet; later that day we learned the theatre where Scott Pilgrim and Kids Are All Right were playing had a bedbug infestation.

From there we went to the new branch of Shake Shack, which we'd never been to (any of them, not just the new one). It was early for dinner, so there wasn't the usual line. I can't say I understand what all the fuss is about, but it was definitely a good burger and a good shake, and ended Carb Day just right. Boy had a prior commitment at night, so I spent the evening on the couch, digesting.

On Tuesday we rented a ZipCar (our first time doing so, and I highly recommend it!) and headed to Long Island. The original plan was to hit some wineries (there's a whole little section of them on the Northern coast, just an hour and a half or so from home) and find a beach. Boy needed some new work clothes and it turned out there's an outlet mall right on the way. We figured we'd stop and buy some pants and have lunch and be on our way. In fact, we were there for four hours. This place is so huge it's in two sections and you have to drive from one to the other. I wasn't prepared for how many housewares stores there would be, including a Williams-Sonoma and a Le Creuset. And there were some really good deals. For two people who don't really like shopping very much, we kinda cleaned up. I'm both a little cheap and a little acquisitive (ok, a lot) so a good outlet mall is a dangerous sweet spot for me.

We did make it to two wineries before they closed, which was really fun. We tasted a bunch of stuff and came home with four reasonably priced bottles. And it was pretty.

From there we found Wildwood State Park. It's kind of a bummer of a beach, with pebbles instead of sand and not much there. But it was pretty to look at if not comfy to sit on, and we got our summer ocean (does Long Island Sound count?) fix. We hung out for a bit, felt suitably relaxed, and headed home for take-out sushi and one of our new bottles of wine. The cat was glad we'd gone shopping too:

For our last day of Staycation, we hit the pre-fixe lunch at Nougatine, one of Jean George Vongerichten's restaurants at Columbus Circle. For those of you in NYC, this is a fantastic deal if you want to have a nice meal on a budget. I felt a little self-conscious taking pictures (I figure they're used to it at WD-50) but trust me, everything was amazing.

We walked off lunch by heading across the park and uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I hadn't been to since I was a kid. I have to say, I'm not a huge fan. I tend to breeze through museums pretty quickly, and the Met had a maze-like quality that makes that impossible. I don't like being forced down a particular path either, but I like when it's possible to explore a building in a linear way. We frequently doubled-back through places we'd been, not necessarily on purpose, and had a hard time finding things we were looking for, including, eventually, the exit. That said, I'm very glad we went. One of the things I liked best was the architecture of the building itself, seeing how new additions were incorporated and how it plays with the park outside. (Of course, that's a big part of what made it maze-like, but at least I could appreciate it!)

One of my favorite things there right now (it ends soon, I think) is a bamboo sculpture on the roof. "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like," and I liked this a lot. I neither know nor care what it "means," I just thought it looked wicked cool. You can climb it (there's a walkway, not like a jungle gym) but only on set tours at certain times of day, which was a bummer. But I love the way it plays with the skyline and sort of takes on this weird life.

By the time we left the museum we were exhausted, and flopped down in the park for a bit. And that was our staycation! I seriously can't recommend it highly enough. I mean, I love going places too (though I really hope we see teleportation in my lifetime, 'cause boy do I hate traveling), and that license being away from home gives you to really escape your life, but there's a lot to be said for sleeping in your own bed too. There was definitely no sense of "now we'll do projects at home." We went out and did things we don't normally do, so it really didn't feel like our day-to-day lives even though we were home.

Yaycation!

Old Enough to Run for President

2010-08-08T19:59:00.001-04:00

(and dropping that whole "On..." thing in the titles)

Shortly after I decided to make a real effort to start blogging with some regularity, my friend Ethan (coincidentally) shared this article about how writing for an audience, even if there isn't actually one there, is good for your brain and makes you a better reader. I completely agree, but what to write?

Yesterday was my birthday. 35 used to sound old but now that I'm here it feels pretty much the same as 29, only fatter and with more grey hair. I have most of the trappings of adulthood – a "husband," a mortgage, a job, an IRA, health insurance, a cat – but I've never fully felt like a grown-up. Maybe that's because I was never a big partier; I've always been a fan of naps. Maybe it's because I work in theater, which is a lot more casual than corporate, and also leads to having lots of younger friends. Maybe it's because so few of my friends have kids, though that's starting to change. But I think probably it's because the whole idea of "feeling like a grown-up" is a fallacy; I feel like me, and my life is my life.

To celebrate, I spent 6 hours straight drinking at the newer beer garden in Astoria. Boy is about to finish school after what feels like forever, so we had lots to celebrate. It was a quiet party with the handful of friends who were actually in town (the curse of the summer birthday I've been suffering all my life – next year I'm going to wait until October and celebrate the anniversary of my bar mitzvah...which was delayed because of the summer birthday), and a perfect, breezy, New York summer night.

Boy left for a previously-planned trip on Saturday morning. I never sleep well when I've had too much to drink (omg I'm getting old!) so after making myself a delightfully huge hangover breakfast I took to the couch where I almost literally spent the entire day. It was, I have to say, an absolutely delightful way to spend my birthday. I was in bed again by 10:30.

After 9 blissful hours of sleep, I made another overly-caloric breakfast (hey, it's my birthday weekend), cleaned the apartment and did laundry and was done with my weekend chores by 1:00. I let the smug feeling from that carry me right back to the couch, where I've spent the rest of the day. I watched Never Sleep Again, a four hour (really?) documentary about Nightmare On Elm Street that made me want to watch the whole series again (I have my three favorites that I've seen over and over, but haven't seen the other 5 in years); and 2012, which felt like 4 hours but was also surprisingly enjoyable; and lots of BBC America. Now Boy is home and we're working on the DVR.

Laziest. Birthday. EVER. Awesome.

Unrelated: I edited the iPad post from the other day and added a couple of cons. I'd thought of them earlier but then forgot them as the post dragged on and on, and remembered as soon as I picked the iPad up again. I also added a couple more app recommendations. Nothing that changes my bottom line opinion on the thing though.

On iPad

2010-08-02T22:22:00.007-04:00

When they first announced the iPad, I thought, as many people did, "It's a giant iPod Touch? I don't get it." Then I read more about it, especially as it might be used for travel, and it started to sound more appealing. I especially liked how you could get the 3G model without a data plan, but sign up for it on the fly if you needed it. I've definitely wound up at hotels that advertised WiFi only to discover they don't really have it. Wanting the 3G had the added benefit of making me wait longer, so then I got the chance to play with other people's WiFi-only models. Weirdly, I was sort of sold but when I actually had one in my hand, as impressed as I was by the shiny, I still couldn't quite figure out what it was for. Meanwhile, I took a brief business trip and thought about how nice it would be to have something a little lighter than my laptop with me, and also how much easier it would be to use something flat in the confines of a plane. It's truly a wonder that we can have WiFi on planes and buses, but deeply frustrating that there's not actually room to open a laptop properly and use it. In the end, I decided I couldn't really know what I'd do with it unless I actually used it "in the field," so I figured I'd get one and if I didn't like it I could just sell it on eBay. (Boy's response to that after I'd had it for a week and was clearly keeping it, "Oh, did you believe you when you said that? I didn't.")

I saw lots of "It's magical and revolutionary!" and lots of "It's stupid!" press when the iPad first came out, but I haven't seen a lot of real-world reviews. Perhaps just because I don't care so much to read them now that I have my own. But anyway I thought I'd do my own list of pros and cons, just for fun. I will say up front that I come down very squarely on the Pro side. I'm also very nitpicky. I spend a lot of time thinking about user interfaces and customization and the dream computer/PDA/cell phone that I wish existed, so I've got a lot of niggling Cons on the list. I'm certainly not being an Apple fanboy apologist (no, I would never do that) but I'm really happy with it in spite of them.

I should mention that I still don't have an iPhone, but not for the reasons in that old post (well, #4 is still accurate), which seem incredibly quaint three years later. I plan to get one very soon, but for now I have a Storm, the Blackberry that wishes it were an iPhone. I bring this up only to say that the iPad is my first experience with iOS, and that my reference point for touch screen devices is the Storm, which, while, clunky in many ways, has a lot going for it.

Pro: It's incredibly intuitive…: We had no internet in the office for nine days (that's another story altogether) and the iPad got passed around a bit (it's a small office). I opened the browser and our webmail for my boss, who no one (herself included) would describe as terribly tech-savvy, turned my back, and she was typing away. I was fairly impressed.
Con: …except when it's not.: Later that same day, my quite tech-savvy co-worker used it and couldn't figure out how to select and copy text. And why would he? I either figured it out by accident or read it in the manual (yes, I actually read the manual). I still can't figure out how to put the cursor in the middle of a word to fix a typo (can you even do that?). Some of the cons below are related to this. The device is so fundamentally simple and clearly designed to just be picked up and used, that whenever it's not easy it's jarring.
Pro: Safari: When I started looking at apps, I couldn't believe there wasn't a Facebook app for the iPad. Then I opened Facebook in the browser. It's just Faceook. As long as there's no Flash involved, it's pretty much just like going online on a real computer.
Pro: Video: For several months, for no apparent reason, my MacBook has been a little iffy about playing video. Generally, it will play for a while and then the audio will continue while the image freezes. Not so on the iPad. As long as it's not Flash, of course, everything has been smooth and crystal clear, including YouTube and streaming Netflix.
Pro: Battery: I haven't done a long trip with it yet, but the battery seems to last a very long time, as promised. And it doesn't get hot like at all, unlike my laptop which is currently making me sweat through a padded lapdesk.
Con: Inconsistent user interface: Within Apple's own apps, there's an inconsistency to how things work. On the home screen, swiping changes the page. In Books (and the Kindle app), swiping or just tapping on the side of the screen "turns the page." But in Calendar and Address Book, there are little arrows you have to click. It's especially weird because both use a similarly twee paper image/metaphor to the Books app, so you naturally want to "turn the page."

I also find it both very weird and very annoying that some apps have a place to tap to bring up their settings, and some live in the device's overall Settings (Apple is at least consistent – all of theirs live in the main area). Especially without multi-tasking, it's very strange to have to exit the app you're using to set something up in that app. How does it make any sense to have to leave my Google Reader app to change the order in which I'm viewing the feeds?
Con: Not enough buttons: One of the things I really like on Blackberries is the Menu button, which, well, pops up a menu. The menu contextual based on where you are (apps, etc.), and it solves pretty much all the problems above, with settings, copy, paste, etc. I know adding physical buttons is a no-no for Apple (though I don't really get why, since I'm sure they could design something sexy), but why not stick something in the menu bar? While we're at it, why not stick a lot of things in the menu bar? On the Storm – and, for that matter, on a Mac – clicking the clock, the connections icon, etc. opens a menu or takes you to the relevant settings or app. On the iPad, clicking anywhere in the menu bar scrolls whatever you're viewing to the top of the page. It's not unuseful, but for a while I kept doing it by accident and not understanding what was happening.
Pro: The main keyboard: I taught myself to type at a very early age, before anyone got around to teaching me how to do it properly. As a result I can type very quickly and accurately using mostly three fingers and a thumb. So maybe that's why I took to the iPad keyboard so quickly, but whatever the reason I find it very speedy and natural-feeling. I frequently miss the space bar (and when I do I almost always hit N, which shows how consistently I hit the same spot with my thumb when I can actually feel the bar), and I'm having a tough time learning the secondary keyboards (the Storm's are pretty intuitive), but in general I'm very impressed. (I have yet to do any real high-volume writing on it. I thought about writing this on it – it seemed to make sense – but in the end I didn't want to, mostly because things like copying links just work better with multiple windows.)
Con: The other keyboards and shortcuts: As much as I like the physical experience of typing on the iPad, the layout of it's secondary keyboards baffles me. I suppose this is largely about being used to the Storm's keyboard, but the layout doesn't bear any resemblance at all to a computer or a phone's keyboard. Adding to the confusion, it's not quite the same as the iPhone layouts, so when running an iPhone app it's another keyboard that I haven't learned yet. The Storm also has better shortcuts: Pressing and holding a key will give you a capital letter; tapping the shift or number keys will give you a single hit on those keyboards, holding them locks it; there are separate keys to access both of the secondary keyboards from the main one, instead of iOS' method of drilling down. I'm sure I'll get used to it all, but as with some of the other UI and button stuff, it's surprising that a device this deliberately simple has me doing things in three clicks that I'm used to doing in one.
Con: Twitchy Autocorrect: This is something else I assume I'll get used to, but it seems counterintuitive that I have to tap the suggested word to not use it. On Blackberries, it's the opposite – you tap a suggestion to select it, and just keep typing to ignore it. Also, what if I want to type its or ill or hell? I mean, I appreciate the help, especially since I can't really find the apostrophe, but it seems like it's helpful to the point of no longer being helpful. (Slate recently ran a great article on autocorrection systems.)
Con: Calendar App: Sort of a half-con, really. The calendar is very pretty, and certainly functional. Syncing with MobileMe is dreamy. But like several of the iPad's apps, it inexplicably defies conventions that have been around forever. I'm constantly trying to tap and drag appointments to change their times. Like in every other calendar application since the dawn of time, including iCal. Nope. It's tap the event, tap the edit button, tap and scroll the times…tedious. Similarly why not tap a blank spot in a day to create a new appointment there? Or double-tap, to make it like double-clicking in every other calendar application since the dawn of time, including iCal. Nope. Click the add button, change the date, time, etc. It's just a lot of tapping (again) that could be pretty easily avoided by following convention. Also, see above re: scrolling and swiping.

Also, in my world weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday. All through high school and college I used those Week At a Glance planners that put the weekend on the end, and later worked with a union where an official workweek was Monday-Sunday, no matter where your day off was. When I look at a calendar I just expect it to start Monday.

iCal and Outlook let you decide what day you want your week to start. Blackberries and Palms to do. Not the iPad!

Also, I realize this is old news to iPhone users, but WTF there's no Tasks app?? Seriously??? Every PDA or smartphone I've owned since 2000 has had a to-do list. It's built into iCal and Outlook. Perhaps most curious, my iCal tasks sync with MobileMe and appear in the web calendar, just as they do in iCal. Apple clearly CAN do this. So why on earth would they leave it out of iOS? I found a pretty slick third party app (iPronto), but I shouldn't have had to pay for it. Adding admittedly useful insult to injury, iPronto syncs using my MobileMe account.
Pro: Other Apps: The iPad is not going to fully replace my laptop. There are things it just can't do, or that I can do faster on a "real" computer. But I'm impressed by how many things it not only can do, but can do better than my laptop. Part of that is just the nature of its portability; a map application will obviously be improved by GPS. But the Maps app is so much better than the Google Maps website that powers it. Same for lots of location-based programs (I can only say "apps" so many times before it loses meaning) like Around Me. That's an iPhone app (dammit) but it will be just as useful on the Pad if I'm traveling and want to leave the hotel.

I do most of my reading online and I spend the majority of my iPad time in Reeder, a Google Reader…reader. It's very pretty, but more importantly (to me), it syncs and stores articles and even images for offline reading, making it perfect for subways and planes. When you're back online sync it up again. I already mentioned iPronto, and while I wish it weren't necessary it definitely does the job well. AccuWeather is incredibly gorgeous, which seems an odd thing to say about a weather app, but it just is (and also useful). Read It Later also lets me read internet content offline, and I can add to it from any browser. Pages and Numbers are very nice, and have been able to open any Word and Excel documents I've thrown at them so far, but to be fair I haven't really done much with them yet. The IMDB app is a thousand times nicer and easier to use than the actual website is. There are several apps like this. I just started using a diet and exercise diary called FatSecret (worst. name. ever.), which I can't say I recommend because I haven't used it much, but if you get a free account it syncs with the website, and it's remarkable how ugly the website is and how nice the app is. They're entirely different experiences, and the web one is definitely bad. OpenTable and HopStop have really pretty iOS interfaces too. It's not a bad trend, I suppose, except not everyone wants or can afford a smartphone or has the same OS. Why not adopt some of the app's design into the bad website?

(IMDB, AccuWeather, Reeder)

I know this is old news to iPhone users, but it's exciting to me, and it's one of the things that finally pushed me over the edge to deciding to get the phone too.
Pro: Games: Sure, games are apps, but I felt they warranted their own category. I have a DS and a PSP but lately I've had a hard time finding games I want to play on them, let alone spend $30 on. I like to play games on the subway while I listen to podcasts, because apparently I can't just do one thing (the TV, of course, is on as I write this). I'm rather obsessed with Angry Birds and Words With Friends, the latter for the social element as much as the game (well, social with people you never actually see or speak to). Qrank is a trivia game you can only play once a day (you play against friends and you all get the same set of questions), which is a great thing to be addicted to because there's a built-in time limit. Wake Up The Box is odd physics fun.

I suspect when I get an iPhone I'll switch to playing games there, and not carrying the Pad around so much, though the big sceen is nice (even for lower-res iPhone apps that get blown up on it). I'm fascinated by the motion control elements (which none of the ones I've mentioned use), which seem to sort of fulfill the promise of the Wii in a much more intuitive and elegant way. I feel like a lot of them work better when the device is smaller and a little more wieldy. Doodle Jump works really well though.
Pro: 3G on the fly: I mentioned this above and there's not much else to say about it. It's easy and cool.
Con: It's only 3G: I took a trip a couple weeks ago and had trouble getting onto the janky WiFi network, but there was no 3G either. I have no idea how this works technologically, but it would be nice if it could also connect to whatever lesser network iPhones connect to when 3G isn't available.
Con: No Security Slot: If memory serves, every Mac laptop I've ever owned (which is going back to 1994), has had a slot for a Kensington cable lock. Call me paranoid, but I never travel without it. Not all hotel rooms have safes, lots of people have access to them, and, rigorous backups or not, losing my computer would be a huge pain in the ass. So it seems strange to me that something so light and grabbable wouldn't be lockable. I assume the thining is that an iPad is more like a cell phone than a computer, but there are still going to be times when I don't want to carry it with me, but my paranoia may force me to.
Pro/Con: App Store/iTunes Store: This is one of those super nitpicky ones, but I hate the way the App Store dumps you out to the home screen whenever you do anything. Yes, I just bought something, but I wasn't done shopping, and now I have to go back and wait for everything to load again. Also why do you need my password to upgrade apps I've already paid for? Is someone going to steal my iPad and surreptitiously upgrade me? On the other hand, both stores are super-easy to use, and the instant gratification of being able to read about something online, buy it, and use it instantly is great. And then it's on your computer and on any other applicable devices when you sync.
Con: Finger as input device: It's super-cool in many ways, and I certainly don't want an iStylus, but it's frequently impractical. Like the time I was using the iPad and I paused to put on lip balm from a tin and then was like, Fuck, now I can't use the iPad! I mean, I wiped off my finger and life went on, but I often feel like I'm not clean enough to use it. I also have a tendency to accidentally hit things with limply curled fingers when I'm trying to hit things with my index finger. I guess I should be more forceful.
Con: Lack of Cases: Not a con of the device itself, but I wish there were more options for carrying cases. I know it's new and there will be more. Apple's case is garbage. I'm not convinced it will protect it from a fly landing on it. And it costs $40. I got one from Marware that I mostly love (very sturdy, elastic strap to keep it closed, little kickstand to angle for typing, affordable), but it's as heavy as the iPad itself, which makes it a little less portable or in-bed-readable.

Well, I've gone on far too long, but there's my take on the iPad. I actually thought I'd have more cons when I started. I could probably think of some, but I've gone on long enough. I really love mine, but I can't necessarily recommend it to anyone else. I mean, I wouldn't talk anyone out of it either, but I think it's too new and too expensive for me to say "Yeah, get one!" to anyone. I'm a little internet-addicted, and I read a lot online, and I commute and travel for work, so for me it's kinda perfect, if not a full-on computer replacement. That won't be true for everyone. And I haven't taken a business trip with it yet; that will be the real test. The short vacation I took with it the other week was very successful, but how much real work I can do remains to be seen.

But it's super cool and delightfully science fictiony. Whether that's worth $500+ to you or not is something I couldn't say.

On Writing (or not so much)

2010-07-30T18:39:00.001-04:00

I have a lot of unfinished blog posts. Some are just in my head, but many have actually been started. Many of those are practically comedically old. Sometimes I find myself thinking in blog as I walk down the street. But it never seems to get done. Most often I'll start things but never edit and finish them, or never turn a collection of disjointed thoughts into a proper post. Sometimes I just second-guess whether what I've written is entertaining or if anyone will care what I think about the iPad or Facebook or...why I haven't been blogging.

A couple of years ago, when I changed my career and found myself sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, I figured I'd blog all the time. But my past experience with a desk job had been as a temp, and it turns out that when you have a job you actually like and care about, you spend most of your time there actually working. Shocking.

Which is not to say I don't still spend a crapload of time on the internet all day. But it's short bursts of Facebook or Twitter or Cute Overload, and IM conversations that can be easily dropped in and out of. Nothing long-form. At home I'm usually in front of the computer, catching up on writing, usually with the TV on, not focusing on writing.

I write plenty – generally for work or in 140 characters or less. I've been participating in a photo-a-day thing with a group of people on Flickr (entering its last month). I cook lots, and take pictures of a lot of it. My life has not been devoid of creative pursuits or of oversharing on the internet. But I do miss blogging. I like a good rant now and then, or a moment of indulging my inner TV critic.

I don't know who's reading. I never had too many readers, and haven't looked at my stats in years, and this was more for a few of my friends and me than anyone else. I have over 200 followers on Twitter, but most of them are probably spam (I'm not being self-depricating, that's 100% true), so who knows? But I'm going to try to ramble a bit here again. I think it's good for my brain, even if no one else actually sees it, to write, and to write as if someone else might see it. Welcome, or welcome back.

I threw a bunch of widgets over on the right with all that other stuff I mentioned – Twitter and Facebook updates, shared items from Google Reader, Flickr, even my Netflix and iTunes activity. If you care. It's cool if you don't. If you're in an RSS reader you won't even see any of it.

So is this interesting? Probably not. But it's here. And it's finished!

On Loving Things

2010-06-30T15:07:00.003-04:00

A couple of days after my last post I added this genius image from Failblog to it, and I didn't want anyone who'd already read it to miss out:

Also yesterday Salon ran a piece called "In Defense of Twi-Hards" by Jessanne Collins, which I thought was also worth posting as a rebuttal to the failing of that photo, and to my own post. Not that I don't have the courage of my convictions or anything, but hey, other people are smart too (and get paid to write on the internet!).

Gather several thousand screaming, grease-painted New Englanders in a stadium and what do you have? A Patriots game. Pitch a couple dozen tents outside an Apple store and what do we call it? A strikingly common upper-middle class affliction characterized by enthusiastic gadget consumption. Play Xbox until your eyes bleed and who are you? An American teenager. Now raise your hand if you lost sleep hitting refresh on FiveThirtyEight during the last presidential election or could be witnessed pumping your fist in the air in a pub before noon at any point in the last two weeks. I thought so.

We're a nation of rabid fans. We love loving things that other people love. We love loving things, period.

I've never done any of those things (even my rabid Apple fandom couldn't make me stand in that line!) but I appreciate the point, and I do love loving things. Read the whole thing here.

On Fans

2010-06-18T12:51:00.002-04:00

Last night, when I twittered snarkily about the NBA whatever, my friend Joe replied, "I think if we laid all your 'what's a sports?' tweets end-to-end, they'd stretch all the way to those overturned cars in L.A." And he's right. I do get a little tedious on the subject. While my feelings about sports (and more to the point, sports culture and sports business) are nothing new, in the past year or so Twitter and Facebook have magnified my annoyance. Before, I just didn't travel much in sports-caring-about circles, and it was usually just a background buzz. But now...now I'm shocked on a daily basis by people in my life who I'd expect to share my apathy if not outright disdain (okay, I'll say it: The Gays), whose status updates are in fact all, "Go team!" Now, I've been known to live-twit episodes of Glee, so I can't begrudge anyone their joy or the sharing of it. But looking at an entire screen full of Lakers-related posts last night, I felt backed into a corner and lashed out. My brain just can't process sports. I've simply never enjoyed watching other people play a game, whether that game is baseball or Grand Theft Auto. I understand that there is drama there, but I prefer my drama with a clearer storyline. But I do live in the world and listen to the news every morning and know what's going on.

But while I was being facetious about not knowing what the game was, I was being very sincere about those overturned cars. I mean, what the fuck? This gets into something bigger than sports. It's a level of radical fandom I have never understood. I am a fan of many things. I am a giant, nerdy, somewhat obsessive, very knowledgeable fan of certain things. Yet for all of the embarrassingly geeky facts I know about Star Wars, I didn't set fire to a deli after Phantom Menace (and really, if I were going to set fire to a deli...). I might say things like, "That was the worst Tony Awards since 1994 when Sunset Boulevard won for best musical because it was the only musical!" (um, not that I've ever said such a thing) but that's different from "GodDAMN it!! I can't BELIEVE the Tonys lost! Hey, that guy looks like a Catherine Zeta-Jones fan! Let's punch him!"

Sorry, my metaphor veered back towards sports again, and I didn't mean for it to. Because this really goes to everything. If you liked Michael Jackson or The Beatles, wasn't the point of going to their concerts to, y'know, listen to the music? Maybe sing along? Why would you SCREAM at the top of your lungs? What about just being in the room with them would make you actually pass out?

I'm as baffled by this level of fandom for things I'm in to too, or things that in fact pay my bills. I know a young woman (and she's not alone) who has seen the same Broadway shows - not a cheap ticket, generally - hundreds of times. I mean, finances and time aside, doesn't that get boring? I could see going back several times over the course of a run, maybe checking out the new cast members. I've done that myself. But several times a week for years? I used to get paid to do that and I got bored.

I checked out some Twin Peaks locations when I was in Seattle on business, but I didn't make a special cross-country trip to Forks, on which the town in Twilight is based only in name and weather. I went to a sing-along screening of the Buffy musical episode, but I didn't go in costume.

I think, also, that pop culture fandom, for the most part, is pretty marginalized. Things that are super-mainstream don't seem to breed the same kind of rabidity as things that are a bit more culty. (Lost is probably a good exception to this, as is the occasional pop star, I suppose.) A Star Trek convention sounds like torture to me, but I understand the appeal, especially pre-Internet.

But sports insanity is not just mainstream, it's expected. The thing I most don't get is the sense of ownership that sports fans get, which doesn't seem to cross over into other areas of fandom. "We won!" No, they won. You watched. You didn't even help. Like, sure, be excited, but why on earth would you have personal pride like you did something? I don't think even the most die-hard, parents'-basement-dwelling, Klingon-speaking Star Trek fan ever watched an episode and was like, "Yeah, best episode ever! We nailed that script!"

And really - really - why would you start a riot? Is that something people do when they're happy? As one friend wrote on my Facebook status, "I really liked August Osage County. After it won the Tony I set fire to my neighborhood deli." Is this a natural human impulse? 'Cause it seems really ass-backwards to me, and it does not seem to be something that fans of other things do, no matter how frighteningly intense they are.

I have no witty conclusion of my own (there's nothing to conclude anyway, I'm not trying to argue a point or convince anyone of anything, except maybe don't throw rocks at the LAPD), so I'll leave you with this quote from actual sports fan Chuck Klosterman, with whom I agree completely:

I hate the idea that rooting for a team without justification somehow proves that you are traditional, loyal, and "a true fan." All it proves is that you're ridiculous, and that you don't really consider the motivations that drive your emotions, and that you probably care more about geography and the color of a uniform than you do about any given sport. I have a sportswriter friend who constantly attempts to paint me as a soulless hypocrite, simply because I adored the Boston Celtics in 1986 but I'm wholly ambivalent toward them today. His argument makes no sense to me. I have no idea why my feelings about an organization twenty years ago should have any effect on how I think now. The modern Celtics have different players, a different coach, a different offense, different management, different ownership, and they play in a different arena; the only similarity between these two squads is that they both wear green and they both used the same parquet floor.

I'm not rooting for flooring.

On Lost Again

2010-05-12T11:23:00.005-04:00

Since everyone else is writing about Lost today...

Two recent conversations have helped me solidify and better articulate my feelings on the show. First, a friend said, "I love big ensemble dramas!" and I thought, So do I...so what's the problem? Well, the problem is those are really hard to do well, and I just don't think Lost is very good at it. That might be an inherent problem with its structure. On a show like Battlestar or The West Wing or even Grey's Anatomy (and I'm assuming The Wire, though I've never seen it - I know, shut up)even though there are a gajillion characters, they're all in a fairly confined world, so you can tell one individual story and still check in with other people, because that individual has to do that in the course of his or her day. From the very beginning Lost gave us the flashbacks, which took us away from 99% of the cast for half of each episode. (I thought that structure was really cool for the first couple of seasons, but I think it helped the show get away from the writers. It certainly helped it get away from me, since I ultimately care about what's happening on the island and didn't want to be taken away from that to watch Jack be a super surgeon or whatever, which isn't so interesting.) And in later seasons when everyone was in different camps the same thing could happen on the island. I think this explains why, as I said in my earlier post, I've never been able to get a real feel for any of these characters or even how the majority of them relate to each other. It's like the writers couldn't keep track of everybody after a while, and if they can't how can I be expected to?

Then this morning I was talking to my boss, who loves Lost but is not normally a science fiction fan. I explained to her that good sci fi/fantasy works because it has rules and it sticks to them. The premise may be utterly ridiculous, but in this world, this is how things work. The world is therefore believable even if certain elements of it are not. (The same principle applies to musicals, but I digress.) The world of Lost has never made sense to me. I was careful how to phrase that because I'm sure others will disagree. But I've just never understood how the Island is supposed to work, and have had a hard time making sense of it. The ground-rules need to be there and need to be clear to hook me in.

That said, I liked last night's episode, even though it was beyond silly. I didn't miss having the regular characters around (and what does that say about them??) and found it rather a relief to have an episode with only three people in it, telling us clear and simple things. I didn't care at all that most of those things made not one bit of sense, I was just happy to have a simply-told story for a change. And I'll watch ~~Betty White~~ Allison Janney do just about anything. It was like CJ Cregg held a press conference and explained the show.

"But what if we miss something?"

2010-05-09T12:46:00.002-04:00

Once again, Heather Havrilesky perfectly and brilliantly sums up my feelings on Lost (except I think I grew weary of the series before she did).

Some highlights:

And if we wanted to waste six years in a Judeo-Christian allegory, we would've just followed a Jehovah's Witness home a long time ago. At least their Armageddon should be a little bit gripping and suspenseful.
...
So why haven't we been able to walk away? Well, what if we miss something?

What if Kate's head starts gushing rainbow sherbet? What if Ana Lucia comes back from the dead, and she stops by In-N-Out Burger on the way? What if Jacob turns out to be Bob Dylan? What if Bob-Dylan-really-Jacob takes Locke-really-smoke-monster by the throat and chokes the life out of him, but in the flash-sideways universe, Bob-Dylan-really-Jacob gets a job at a Hot Dog on a Stick and writes poetry in his basement that he never shows to anyone, not even the blond honey who works the register? What if the entire island is just a tattoo on Marilyn Manson's lily white butt cheek?

On Doubling Down

2010-04-29T13:35:00.015-04:00

I had a Double Down for lunch today. I was egged on by a coworker who can't have gluten and therefore can't eat a single thing at KFC who wanted to "see one." And I was curious too so it didn't take much urging once I had someone else I could blame. I posted on Facebook that I was going to do this and got more comments than I have ever had on a status update. The Double Down has struck a deep chord in our society.

I'm just not sure what the big deal is. Yes, it's disgusting, salty and greasy, but, um, have you had KFC before? I've seen (and eaten) bigger sandwiches. With bread. Big Macs have been around forever, and that's also two slabs of meat - plus three pieces of bread. Think about a classic club at any diner in America. If we were just talking about a dinner of fried chicken, would anyone think it unusual to eat two breasts?

The last time I went to Chipotle, which I think most people would consider "good" (or at least "better") fast food, I had a burrito with the works (because a burrito without sour cream and cheese is not a burrito I'm interested in eating) and a side of chips and guac (because Chipotle's chips are like crack). I did the math and it clocked in around 1,500 calories. Sure, there were some vegetables in there, and probably way less salt than KFC, but I was so full I didn't eat dinner that night. The Double Down has 540. That's 10 less than a McDonald's salad. True, that salad has fried chicken and bacon and ranch dressing on it, but how many people think they're eating healthily because they're eating a salad? At least the Double Down has no pretensions or illusions. And a Triple Whopper (triple???) has 1,160 calories. (Source.)

Look, I'm not endorsing this thing. I'm not a big fast food eater anyway (though I used to be, and I am well-versed), and I was horrified at what I saw on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and I think we all need to eat healthier and cook more and this industry is pretty bad for humanity. I'm just saying a breadless sandwich is not Armageddon. Breading aside, it reminded me of when I did Atkins back in the day. I feel like we've all fallen for a big marketing gimmick. This is exactly what they want. We're all talking about this stupid thing. I haven't eaten KFC in years, and they got my $7.99 today. They win.

Okay, so my actual review:

I had to wait a long time for it, which means it was...fresh? I don't know. But it was much less greasy than I expected (which is not to say it wasn't greasy) and didn't have that feeling of sitting around forever fast food. It's a reasonable size. I mean, it's 2 chicken breasts. Somehow I expected it to be the size of my head. It is insanely salty. The 11 herbs and spices are 11 versions of salt, I think. But, again, I've eaten KFC before so this was not a surprise. The chicken appeared to be whole pieces of chicken, and it didn't seem fatty. It may have been skinless, but under the coating I wasn't sure. (Yes, there is cheese and bacon - I'm not calling this a low-fat meal!) The cheese and sauce are completely unnecessary (the sauce is especially questionable, as I've no idea what it was) but do provide a bit of balance to the salt, and a texture break from the endless breading (is salty a texture?). I got the combo because it just seemed like the thing to do, and the fries were a nice change of texture too (though they were just as salty as the sandwich, maybe more).

I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it, but like I said it wasn't so bad. It's nowhere near as overwhelming as I thought it would be and I ate it pretty quickly and pretty happily. As I write this, it's been about an hour (not posting til later so I can get photos off my camera) and I definitely feel like I ate a giant pile of protein. My stomach is clearly not thrilled with me, but like I said I don't eat much fast food so that would happen if I'd had a Happy Meal. I don't feel sick or anything, just like I ate something I don't usually eat. I am still thirsty.

In conclusion: If you like KFC you will like this. It's no more disgusting than anything else there. Possibly even a little less.

Update: It's been about 6 hours and we're coming up on dinner time. I am definitely aware that I ate a bigger- and unhealthier-than-usual lunch today, but my insides have been behaving, and I'm actually starting to get hungry for dinner. Over two liters of water later, though, and I am definitely still thirsty. It's possible I will still be thirsty forever.

Also, I apologize for not having a photo with a bite taken out. Even though it wasn't too greasy, it was greasy enough that once I started eating it, I really didn't want to handle my camera. I should've made Branden take one.

On Baggage

2010-04-19T13:30:00.001-04:00

Writing this at 20,000 feet, I have two thoughts – 1) In-flight WiFi would be so much cooler if they actually gave you enough room to open a laptop properly, and 2) Senator Schumer, who I'm normally a big fan of, has it all wrong with regards to baggage fees.

He's gotten a bunch of airlines to agree not to charge for carry-on bags. In my opinion, this is missing seven vital words: if they also charge for checked baggage.

I twittered about this the last time I flew domestically, and my carry-on bag was snatched from me at the door of the plane because the flight was too full for it. Think about it: Checking luggage is, for the most part, a huge hassle. Yes, you can carry more stuff and not worry about the sizes of your liquids, but it's time-consuming and stresses a lot of people out (including me), with fears of things getting lost or damaged or not making connecting flights. By contrast, carrying-on is a convenience. You get to keep your stuff with you, save time at check-in and save a lot of time upon landing. On most planes there aren't actually as many overhead compartments as seats, so it's impossible for every passenger to have a roll-aboard or a garment bag. Also, most people are stupid and/or selfish, and don't use the compartments at their seats, creating a terrible jam-up during boarding and exiting (like "tweeting," I refuse to say "deplaning").

I would be thrilled to pay for carry-on luggage (provided, as I said, that checking – and purses, laptop bags, etc. – remain free). Isn't this how it's supposed to work? We pay for convenience. The less-convenient option is free. It would have the added benefit of reducing the number of carry-ons onboard, thus making more space available, and allowing for better traffic flow.

Seriously, how does everyone not win in this scenario? I mean, except for the people who think everything should be free while also decrying "socialism." But that's another post entirely.

On Lost

2010-04-19T11:53:00.000-04:00

Okay, this is why I don't blog anymore. I start writing (or thinking about) something, and then I don't finish (or write) it, and then the point becomes moo. So I started writing this rant about Lost last week, pretty much got all my points down but needed to edit it, then dragged my heels, and then this week's episode (which, actually is now already last week's episode) was fucking fantastic and I am no longer filled with rage. Like, actually, all the rage I've felt towards this show over the last 4 years or so was just (and by "just," I mean a week ago when I started writing this addendum to what I started writing a week before) wiped away in 44 minutes. But y'know what, all these seasons of rage are still worth a blog post, so just pretend it's last week and I just suffered through an hour of Desmond nonsense which the rest of the world inexplicably loved.

I haven't really liked Lost since the first season, and I've come to resent it mightily. I feel compelled to watch it to the end, partly because of the whole cultural phenomenon thing (I'll feel like I'm missing something if I don't watch) but also because of the genuine goodwill and investment they generated during that first season (maybe season and a half, I don't remember exactly when I checked out). But I don't like it. It's like homework. There are moments, flashes, when the show still engages me, but they're few and far between. Mostly I'm bored. And the way the entire rest of the world seems to be obsessed with it just makes me hate it more, because I'm contrary like that.

I consider myself pretty mainstream, and I love me some pop culture trash, but I do tend to react badly when the masses (and not even necessarily the mass masses, but the majority of people I interact with) tell me I HAVE to watch something, or what do you MEAN you don't like it? Most of the shows I've been really fanboyish about over the years - Battlestar, Buffy, Doctor Who, Twin Peaks, Max Headroom, to name a few off the top of my head - have mostly been at least a little bit culty. In fact, I started watching Lost purely because it had JJ Abrams' name on it, and I was a huge fan of Alias, another show not a lot of people watched. I remained a fan to the very end, when the plot stopped making one bit of sense. Which sounds pretty familiar. But Alias was never really about the crazy spy missions, which got to be a little repetitive. It was about really complicated characters with really complicated relationships, and it had some of the best acting on television from stage vets Victor Garber and Ron Rifkin. My favorite shows are all about the people in them first and foremost. I don't care much about the Rambaldi device or if it was Earth all along, or if Leland was possessed by a demon, I mostly want to see where these people I've spent years watching end up.

This for me is the exact problem with Lost. It IS about the Island. And when it does focus on the people, they're not people I want to spend any time with. The first season showed promise of an interesting group of characters dealing with an insane situation, with the flashbacks giving us little bits of backstory in an inventive way. But over the years I've come to HATE these people. They're completely two-dimensional, and the constant piling on of new ones gives us episodes like this week's [last week's!] where we don't see a single member of the original cast for more than 30 seconds. Though that's okay, given how I feel about most of the original cast. They're either whiny, selfish and hateful (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Locke, Jack, Jack), boring (Desmond), one-note (Sayid, Locke again, sorry - Ben), delightful-yet-always-subtitled (Sun), or kinda stupid (Hurley, Charlie, Jin). The people I like are generally dead (Juliet, red-headed nosebleed girl, that girl Hurley was seeing for a while [hey, she came back!], Rousseau, Carl) or aren't around much (Widmore, Penny, Eloise – who, yes, were all in the Desmond episode). Actually, not having them around much might be why I continue to like them. There's no depth to any of them. Every Jack flashback (or flashforward or fucking flash sideways) is exactly the same - Jack's an arrogant, petulant, self-centered asshole - and we learn nothing new because there's nothing new to learn. That's all the writers have. And with so many other people to get to, it's all they can have. Michael Emerson's performance is delightful, and Ben's a bright spot in the show for me, but even he's wearing thin as he continues to do the exact same thing week after week. And a love triangle between three of the most annoying characters on television? Kill me. And thank you, Juliet for putting a bit of a stop to it.

I'm a big fan of smart, complicated TV. But Lost doesn't feel smart to me. And it's only complicated because they just keep throwing more shit at it and seeing what sticks. It feels to me like people who want other people to think they're smart and awesome and are just putting on a show of it. I want to see storytellers who are smart and awesome organically. The writers may have a plan (and I have enough respect for JJ Abrams' other work to think that may be so) but at this point the mythology is so sprawling and messy and (seemingly?) inconsistent that I can't be bothered to follow it and have come out the other side on boring. I'm good at mythology-heavy shows, but when I lost interest I lost the thread and I rarely have much desire to follow ancillary stuff, even on shows I like better, so as time goes by it becomes that much harder to engage. Battlestar Galactica (to resort to nerd cliché) expertly gave us the sense of a large world in grave peril, but focused on a relatively small group of people in that world.

I love time travel stuff, so the flash-sideways is an interesting idea, and I was actually really into the season premiere where the concept was set up. But I do not care one little bit about Kate, or a timeline that has nothing to do with the actual story of the show, so spending 44 minutes with alterna-Kate is like torture. I know it will all tie in at the end (and I really dug the last 15 minutes of the Desmond episode where that started to happen - though the first 30 minutes were like death because who gives a fuck about alterna-Desmond being even more boring than usual, brother?) but I don't see how going into all this detail about lives that in some sense will never have happened is a good use of my time.

It was harder to be a fan back in the day, but it was also so much easier to NOT be one. I'm definitely a bit of a joiner (hi, Twitter!) and also a big consumer of internet content (hi again, Twitter!) so it all becomes a little impossible to avoid. Even just five years ago it was very easy for me not to watch The Wire or Deadwood and not care one bit, but since they're apparently the Best Shows Ever, if they were on now I don't know if I'd be as strong - of if people would leave me alone about it.

Even Salon's Heather Havrilesky, who I think likes the show, sums up her review of the season premiere with this:

Ah, "Lost." You had us at hello, and we've been lawfully wedded to your deceptively mysterious but ultimately empty bag of mashed-up jackass ever since. At least we know that we'll only have to suffer through one more season of this foolishness. And now we have someone to root for: evil fake Locke, see also: the smoke monster. As long as he destroys everyone and everything in his path in the end, then he's our guy.

(Hm, or maybe she doesn't like it at all - a week later she wrote, "No, no, say the show's die-hard fans, it all adds up to pure brilliance, with numbers and mirrors and alternate realities! But ask any actual screenwriter or fiction writer or seasoned storyteller, and he or she will agree: There is no glorious final answer that can justify pulling a deus ex machina out of your ass every other episode.... Look, there is actually a difference between an elaborate, multitiered maze created by a mathematical genius and an enormous, tangled mess of scrap metal dumped there by someone who read a few Wikipedia entries on chaos theory and quantum mechanics and thought they were seriously cool.... It's not a guilty pleasure because there's no guilt and even less pleasure." It's nice to see a wicked smart professional critic who's on my side about this.)

I don't have a tidy way to end this post, especially since my thoughts are shifting a bit in the time since I started writing it, so I'll leave you there with the words of someone who actually gets paid to write about this stuff. And with a faint glimmer of hope that I might like the last 5 episodes of this show as much as I liked the first 5, and it might make the years of abuse in between seem worth it.

Oh, hey, look, I still have a blog, and I can write more than 140 characters here (a lot more, as it turns out). What an interesting concept!

I really never get tired of New York at sunset

2009-09-15T20:18:00.002-04:00

Excel = Love

2009-09-08T21:18:00.000-04:00

DS Web: Office Sweets: ""

Nature Calls

2009-09-08T20:08:00.005-04:00

Earlier this summer, my apartment building finished work on a garden/patio/courtyard thing out back, seen here at its official opening party:

It's lovely...not that I've spent any time there...but I've considered it. Anyway, in the past few nights I've noticed an unmistakeable sound: crickets. Well, possibly just one cricket. But really? Crickets? Is there anything more annoying? In Queens, for god's sake?

This evening I heard something I'm pretty sure was a cicada. Or maybe a Mansquito. It was very unnerving. I live in the city because I don't like nature. I'm all about some oxygen-providing plants in a controlled setting, and the turtle in the pond is cute, but noise-making insects have no place here. Next thing you know we'll have wolves eating housecats and monkeys flinging poo at the windows.

I intend to call management and demand that concrete be poured over the whole mess tomorrow.

On Twits

2009-09-05T18:49:00.001-04:00

I reject the idea that technology has brought a scourge of rudeness to our society. Okay, true, the guy texting or twittering (I refuse to say "tweet," which I acknowledge is just as much an affectation as saying it) while having a conversation with you is probably being more overtly rude than he was before he had an iPhone, but chances are he would have been just as easily – if less noticeably – distracted before. Technology has provided new tools of distraction, but people have always zoned out or doodled during meetings, played Free Cell during conference calls, and read the side of the cereal box at the breakfast table.

Maybe, in a twisted way, it's better now. Now you know the douchebag on his Blackberry in the meeting isn't listening to you and can plan accordingly, whereas before you might have thought he was taking notes when he was really drawing spirals and spaceships.

Also: Oh hai. I've been thinking about blogging again. So, y'know, here's a post. Not a very good one...inauspicious start...

On the Oscars

2009-02-22T22:10:00.001-05:00

I hate the Oscars. Not the show. Not awards in general. No, I hate the way it turns me against the nominated movies.

I don't go to the movies much, and my Netflix queue is a mile long. So it's rare that I've seen many nominated films when the awards are actually given out. But it's also rare that I want to. Even before the nominations come out, I have this immediate, irrational distaste for "prestige movies." If something has even the faintest smell of Oscar-bait, I'm out. And after the nominations, forget it. I just assume it's pretentious and over-hyped and I don't want to see it.

While that's probably true of Benjamin Button, I'd probably like Milk and Slumdog and Revolutionary Road. But now I hate them, just because.

I do enjoy a good musical montage though!

Caveat Emptor

2009-02-21T18:40:00.003-05:00

Hey! Um, so I haven't blogged in quite a while, huh? I thought it had been longer, actually, but I did have to look to find that out. I've been feeling like getting back to it again lately, I'm not sure why. I've considered posting about shaving cream, Twitter, and video game boss fights, but of course, I'm back with a rant.

I was listening to Planet Money (which is amazing and you should all listen to it especially if you don't think you care about politics and the economy and don't know what's going on) and an otherwise very smart-sounding economist said something about people losing their homes "through no fault of their own" and I nearly threw my iPod out the window.

I've come close to blogging about this many times, but I thought, "Hey, I'm not that smart, I must be missing something." But I don't think I am.

Look, I know that lenders and brokers were "predatory," and I know that anyone who bought a home two years ago or so couldn't reasonably expect the bottom to drop out so dramatically. But what ever happened to "buyer beware?" Whatever happened to reading the fine print? To understand what you're signing when you're borrowing thousands of dollars? Especially the part about how the interest rate can change?

We need money education in this country almost as much as we need sex education. Maybe we can combine them. "Condoms cost less than babies!" College kids need to know that a credit card is not free money. Grown-ups need to learn that no one's going to just give you a house. There's nothing wrong with debt. Debt is useful. Debt can be a gift. But it is, by definition, something you have to pay back.

When Boy and I bought our apartment, we opted for a fixed-rate mortgage because, well, it's fixed. Our interest rate was higher than it would have been if we'd done an adjustable, but an adjustable, well, adjusts. And it does so unpredictably. We understood this in 2004, because we'd done our research. A higher rate now was worth less risk later. We knew going in what our payments would be, and we knew that if we did nothing, they would never change. We knew we could afford them. And that they won't go up, so as our salaries (hopefully) do, and the overall cost of living increases, their value will lower. We also, for various reasons, had to take a no-income-verification loan. The bank took a chance based on my good credit rating (unlike later, when they started taking chances based on nothing at all). But again, we knew we could afford it, or we wouldn't have done it. Because otherwise we'd be homeless.

Now, I should say that we had a fabulous, smart, ethical mortgage broker, which I know was the opposite of the case in all these sub-prime schemes. And those people should be punished. But I still don't see how that lets the borrowers off the hook. When I spend or borrow lots of money, it's as much my responsibility to do my homework as it is the salesman or lender's not to con me.

The situation has escalated, and is dire, and has so many effects elsewhere – I'm not saying I'm against bailouts or assistance (though I'm not saying I'm for them, either), I'm just saying "through no fault of their own" is bullshit.

Tell me why oh why are my genetics such a bitch

2008-11-10T11:41:00.002-05:00

I have a playlist that i constantly change with whatever my favorite songs are at the moment.

Right now it's about 90% Repo! The Genetic Opera, Rock of Ages and High School Musical 3.

What does that say about me as a person?

Seriously?

2008-09-30T20:14:00.001-04:00

Other People Say Things Better Than I Do

2008-09-28T10:51:00.002-04:00

DVR Break-Up: Heroes

I'm not quite at the break-up stage yet, but I couldn't have said it better myself.

Word. Dope, even.

2008-09-07T18:36:00.004-04:00

More 90210 memories, from The Ben Stiller Show. Jeanine Garafolo's Doherty is beyond genius.