Technically this counts as a new post

Technically.

Mine

And because this one has a similar web address if slightly different point of view.

Cacao in a bottle

The closest I've come to drinking cocoa from a wine bottle:



At $25 it's not an everyday bottle, but for a nice Sunday dinner, it's pretty spiffy. The bottle I had was 2002, not, as this picture shows, 1999. Speaking of years, today also brought along a 1996 Rondan Rioja Reserva and a 2001 Igneus Priorat which I expect will be pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Rules of Writing

Found this on another blog. Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules for writing. My they're good. Not all of them apply to screen/TV writing (i.e. number eight), but the one about being a sadist is spot on.



1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Faster YouTube Super Democracy Kill! Kill!

First off, is it me, or does John Edwards bear a striking resemblance to that luckiest man in 70s sitcom history, Jack Tripper?



Just picture him falling over an ottoman or something and you've got it.


This morning as I skimmed Drudge Report for monologue fodder, I came across an small piece about how John Edwards spends $400 to get his hair cut. In the article there was a link to yet another YouTube video that had run its course without my knowledge.

The video shows John Edward and a stylist primping and pruning his hair into a glossy helmet, accompanied by the delicate strains of "I Feel Pretty." If my watching it ten times in a row has anything to do with it, the video is pretty amusing. It's also kind of soothing in an admittedly creepy watching-people-get-their-hair-played-with kind of way.

Attached to this video was another video titled "John Edwards: YouTube is Good for Democracy." As you might have guessed, the clip features John Edwards during a radio interview in which he is asked whether or not he thinks YouTube is good for democracy. Edwards answers, of course it is, it allows for instant and uncensored expression, allowing for both fans and detractors to post their thoughts, regardless of merit or point of view because who are we to decide and blah blah blah. It's a fair answer to a somewhat asinine question, but what's interesting is that neither interviewer nor interviewee seems to really grasp the full meaning of the question.

My feeling is that YouTube and the super-saturated media environment that birthed it, are actually, in a way, bad for democracy. Or at least democracy as far as it relates to presidential elections. Yes, people get to voice concerns and opinions, and video sharing sites do a fantastic job of sorting through all the information out there to the point where nobody misses anything. This is good. And often very funny.

But I'm curious, does all this media saturation make politicians safer? More self-aware? This is not to say that before YouTube political candidates were free-wheeling, but it'd be very interesting to compare how Abe Lincoln campaigned versus any of the 08 candidates. How's that for cool? We'd need weapons grade plutonium to pull this off, but I swear I know a guy.


But let's be clear, it's not YouTube, it's us. Which I'll get to in a second and which brings us back to our earlier point, about YouTube possibly being bad for democracy. Democracy only works if people are well-informed and vaguely educated. Where trouble starts is when you have people being swayed by a clip of, say, John Edwards combing his hair, or more pointedly, Howard Dean's now infamous yell thing. It'd be one thing if we could take random C-SPAN clips or out-of-context sound bytes on the nightly news with a grain of salt, but we can't. Instead we watch it and email it to our friends and post it on our websites and by the time the candidate steps up to the mic, he knows we've seen the clip of him tripping over a mic wire, and worse, he knows we know he knows.

And this is why candidates act safe, play to expectations, spend two minutes combing their hair, because like the nerd who somehow gets a date with the cheerleader for prom, they're too afraid to get their retainer stuck in the girl's mouth and so they end up buying the corsage, not dancing, and dropping her off before returning to their neatly made bed sheets. And because you won't hop into bed with John Edwards' mussy hair, or let Howard Dean chop down a tree with his bare hands, political candidates have prom night blue balls. And that's not good for anything. Now about that weapons grade plutonium...


"CAPTAIN WHITE, THAT TREE IS WHERE TOMORROW, APRIL 10TH 1861, PRESIDENT LINCOLN WILL GIVE AN ARBOR DAY SPEECH! WE DID IT! WE! DID! IT!"

KAKOW!!!

Hopkinton-Ashland-Framingham-Natick-Wellesley-Newton-Brookline-Boston

Forecast for tomorrow's Boston marathon: mid-40s, high winds with a 100% chance of rain.

One suggestion: wear lots of corduroy. The kind with the big cords.

4/4: We Shall Never Forget

Once again too lazy-ish to type real analysis, so instead I present a series of excerpts with snide commentary.


From "Off the Air: The Light Goes Out for Don Imus"

"The CBS chief executive, Leslie Moonves met yesterday afternoon with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson leaders in what became a national movement to remove Mr. Imus from the air in the wake of his comments disparaging members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team. On April 4, Mr. Imus referred on the air to the Rutgers athletes as “nappy-headed hos.”

I like how the first time the phrase was uttered it was the end of all things, but the next four thousand times every pundit, journalist and newscaster says it, it's A-ok. That's neat. To borrow a phrase from Ms. Stringer, doesn't the constant repetition of "nappy-headed hoes" rob the initial incident of its own moment?

Or does context play a role in defining the word's potency? If we can mention it, so long as we aren't using it to offend, it's fine? But what about the dreaded n-word? Newscasters would never use it, even in the most intellectual of settings.

In a statement, Mr. Moonves said: “Those who have spoken with us the last few days represent people of good will from all segments of our society — all races, economic groups, men and women alike. In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society.”

That's really dignified of Les. It's an articulate, humanitarian statement at a moment of national crisis and what's really nice is that for once, in this jaded business, this had nothing to do with commerce or anything. Well played, Les.

Both CBS and MSNBC had been under pressure from black leaders and women’s groups, then advertisers began abandoning the Imus program and its networks this week, pulling out the financial underpinnings from the show.

Oh.

“It was a very productive meeting,” she said. “Players, coaches, parents, administrators, the pastor, and Mr. Imus were able to really dialogue. I’m extremely proud of our 10 young basketball players.”

Isaiah Washington even made an appearance at the love-in and, just to show how cured he is, they strapped him down in a chair, gagged him, and had a homosexual gyrate in his face. When they removed the gag, Isaiah smiled and grunted, "You...friend..."


Asked if Mr. Imus apologized, Ms. Stringer declined to answer. “We’ve said as much as we can say tonight.”

But she did add with a wink, "I can tell you this though, he won't be sitting down anytime soon."

In a memo sent to CBS employees announcing Mr. Imus’s dismissal, Mr. Moonves said: “This is about a lot more than Imus. As has been widely pointed out, Imus has been visited by presidents, senators, important authors and journalists from across the political spectrum. He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people. In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture, which extends far beyond the walls of our company.”

Wow, that's really gr--

Both CBS and MSNBC had been under pressure from black leaders and women’s groups, then advertisers began abandoning the Imus program and its networks this week, pulling out the financial underpinnings from the show.

Oh.

Even then, it seems unlikely that he would match his current salary in a fledgling medium with a fraction of the audience of conventional radio, particularly as the two main satellite companies --Sirius and XM — try to cut costs in pursuit of a merger. Moreover, with Congress and the Federal Communications Commission reviewing that proposed deal, they may be reluctant to take on a tainted figure like Mr. Imus, who would stir controversy among the regulators who must approve the merger.

Segue!

Speaking of bravery, how about those PBS stations that are planning to go ahead and show "Operation Homecoming" UNCENSORED? That's right, they're all, F the FCC, yo! Wartime T&A, Iraqi Freedom style! God forbid all those impressionable PBS viewers should hear a soldier with shrapnel in his leg utter something uncouth.

The decision to air it uncensored at 10PM is because it falls just outside of the FCC's carefully considered "safe zone" of 6AM to 10PM. The logic here is that during these times, it is less likely that a younger audience will be watching. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't airing a show on PBS pretty much cancel out any chance of a young audience in the first place?

From today's NY Times article:

"A handful of stations [including NYC, Albany, DC, and Boston] have chosen not to bleep out eight words and not to obscure a few crude images, none of which the stations would normally put on the air."

Eight words? Crude images? Are these stations trying to let the terrorists win?

"The move comes at a time when many public television stations have chosen to be overly cautious to avoid tangling with the FCC on indecency issues, given ther hefty fines that have been imposted when viewers complain."

Just curious: who's complaining? I mean, I know people DO complain, but who exactly are they? Christian fundamentalists? Fly-over state shut-ins? Toddlers? Who are these people that are so set in their whacko code that they can extract any and everything from context without even blinking?

As a result of these offended callers, most stations are requesting the edited version from PBS. Says the eloquent VP of Washington DC's station WETA* (and Vietnam vet) Joseph Bruns: "We're not doing it to be provocative of the FCC; we're doing it because we believe in the merits of the film as it's been done... I think it's important that people do feel the raw emotions of people who were sent to war."

Important, so long as the image is tidy enough as to not upset Breakfast for Dinner Night at the Johnson home. Waffles instead of filet mignon? Mom's silly!

I bring these two stories up for a reason, but I'm not entirely sure what that reason is. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they say different but similar things about the nature of media censorship and the role context plays in both. Who gets to decide what will fly? Are the opinions of the lunatic mid-West shut-ins as valid as the African-American community? I'm curious as to what it means from a cultural stand point when "eight words" from a war documentary have the same power to offend (and indict) as does a racial epithet?

No doubt there are bigger issues at play, and need to be dealt with, but, as the always enlightening Lionel said the other night, I hope to God we don't lose our edge.




*For a second there, I thought Peter Jackson had started a side venture in DC. My heart done leaped.

Notes from the Decaying Underbelly

The Times' Arts section today provided both a sour note as well as a surprisingly welcome bright spot on this very rainy April day (how rainy? so rainy I'm typing this instead of playing golf). I've all but stopped reading the A section because the minute I see anything involving "car" or "bomb" or any combination of the two accompanied by a photo of a crying Arab man, my eyes glaze over and I pass out. The last time this happened I fell face first into a bowl of my Flaxplus and nearly drowned. How's that for desensitization?

In the tradition of Turbo, first we'll mention the negative. There was the annoyingly told you so-ish "This Time, the Shock Jock's Sidekick Couldn't Shield the Boss." It's actually a decent article, illustrating a producer's role on an occasionally controversial radio show and the fine line involved in a host's proximity to his material. The reason I list this as a negative is that I am so beyond sick of hearing about Imus and the latest melody in this on-going argument. We get it. Please, let's stop. I don't even have the energy to argue either side. I. Just. Want. It. To. Stop. Just draw and quarter Imus and whoever else and then we can finally celebrate the end of all racism or at least wait until someone else says something that someone else can sink their fangs into. I just want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with those brave women, and that I really hope this issue is the main platform during the next election.

Moving right along, our favorite gal pal, Virginia Heffernan made a major move towards paying off the debt she owes me for all the time and energy I've wasted hating her writing. She wrote a great (if blandly titled) article today on the new network shitcom Notes from the Underbelly that actually made me chuckle a bit. The article begins:

“Notes From the Underbelly” is a revolting sitcom about pregnancy. Watch and you’ll lose your appetite for life.

Virginia! Look at you! Perhaps it's my admiration of the word "revolting" and appreciation for how well the first sentence rolls into the next with all the foreboding and knowledge of a much warier, much more seasoned television reviewer.

Normally I'm used to seeing her review "American Idol" or YouTube videos with this odd, unsettling mixture of smarmy condescension and ironic appreciation. It's frustrating and, yes, revolting. Part of the problem is that it wastes valuable space in the shrinking arts section, because for every 500 word review of "Laguna Beach" that is one less valuable article we'll actually get to read. Besides, do the editors (or Ginny) really think the readers of the Arts section even know what most of these shows are? And why do we need reviews of it in the first place? It's like reviewing what happened in your office last week.

But most of all, her articles always seemed to lack a real point of view and a pair of balls. It's easy to write a cutesy pap smear about a video parody on YouTube, or on a harmless reality show that is gosh-darn-silly-but-it's-cute-and-I-can't-help-watching-it-because-it's-on-after-Grey's-
and-who-cares-if-it-signals-the-end-of-society-as-we-know-itidontcare, but what about the (admittedly few) shows that matter? Or their contextual relevancy?

Finally, finally, finally, with today's article, she steps out of the cutesy dorm-room viewing darkness (the one that always left me picturing her eating a frozen dinner, alone, in front of the TV wishing she was hit by a car and Dr. McDreamy/Steamy/Roofie fell in love with her while looking after her but then she dies and he kills himself and then they have tender angel sex) and into the territory of pissed off, not gonna take it anymore criticism that we get in glimpses from Manohla and even the milquetoast A.O. Scott.

She continues:

“Notes” has one of those pushy set-ups in which a noxious central couple is supposed to be normal, while their friends are wacky and desperate. Just turn it off and forget, for the evening, that you have ever heard of television. (It starts tonight on ABC. Forget that too.)

Ki-yah! I am so proud.

Granted, the rest of the article loses it's fangs as she ends up writing about how good the performances are, and even though I'd rather see her tear the show apart and decry the state of the television networks she loves so much, I have to say, I am very pleased with her today.

After today, I feel like I have a better-informed idea of who she is. She's just a sad little lady who likes to watch TV and keep up with celebrity trends and is really nice but lonesome. Also, I'm thinking that she's just so happy to be on the "inside," receiving screeners, getting the scoop before anyone else, that she fears being critical without asking permission first might get her kicked out of the club. She's lost a bit of weight since her pay checks started coming in a little more frequently and with more heft, but she'd still like to lose more. She doesn't really see herself moving beyond the Times or writing, and if she was young enough, she would be writing a lot more messages on her friends' Facebook walls.

So, Ginny, tonight, you go ahead and eat that pint of Ben & Jerry's, you've earned it.

Virginia Heffernan: Arg! Chagrin!

Oh, Virginia. Once again you've made a complex mess out of a simple pancake recipe. When did this vaguely whimsical, surrealist lite take over entertainment viewers for the NY Times? The same way that so many entertainment/gossip blogs (Defamer, Gawker, et al.) seem to have all drank deep and heartily from the same well of tonal sarcasm do reviewers like A.O. Scott and Virginia Heffernan seem to have taken writing lessons from Frank Bruni's less successful writing professor brother-in-law.

A better, perhaps more succinct description might be impressionistic reviews. Take this sentence from today's review of the new season (or second half of last season) of Entourage:

This season is about how men love men, and how they hate themselves for loving men, and how they worry about loving men, and how they need to stand up to men so they can love women, or stand up to women so they can love men.

What? I--it--really?

It also becomes apparent in VH's review that she aspires to something better than critic for the New York Times. Something, like, say, a gossip columnist:

And then there’s Jeremy Piven. Honestly, in the off seasons he looks ready to lose it. Can he really continue playing Ari Gold, the jerk superagent, without getting delusions and landing in ego-disorder rehab?

Like, wow, Scoob!

Now you may not agree with me on this, but perhaps you can forgive me for constantly looking for reasons to hate her writing when you read her other article in today's Times about that Seven Minute Sopranos vid.

Heffernan first gained a foothold in the YouTube/viral video reviewing niche when she reviewed (is reviewed even the right word?) a few of those Brokeback Mountain spoof trailers from a few years ago. Cute. Since then she's balanced her work between reviewing TV pap like Laguna Beach and writing about web video for an audience who a) has already seen the videos under review and b) probably doesn't care.

So it was with this already in mind that I opened up the paper today and greedily devoured her write up about the latest viral-video from-two-weeks-ago-that's-already-been-milked-to-death like a junkie who knows the heroin is only going to hurt him, but can't help needling up first thing in the AM.

I read along almost happily, like Ike and Tina on a pleasant picnic, until I came to this:

And that point — the duet in a major key, followed by a breath — is especially affecting when Carmela reverses her enthusiasm for therapy in the next scene, having learned that Tony’s therapist is a woman. Standing on a balcony she rains a half-dozen black valises down on her husband and curses at him to leave the house. This is the first of several times Mr. Sabia and Mr. Gulyas use this scene. It becomes shorthand for Carmela’s indignation.

The repetition of this stagecraft has become many commenters’ favorite part of “Seven Minute Sopranos.” But it’s also where Mr. Gulyas and Mr. Sabia make clear that they bring a critic’s eye to the action of the show. But what statement are they making with the repetition? Something about the redundancy of Ms. Falco’s performance? Or perhaps the cyclical nature of Tony and Carmela’s marriage?

It's bad enough that Heff is even writing about this in the first place, but when she tosses in attempts to legitimately review a web video, I just about fall off my chair. On purpose. To prove a point, you know? What statement are they making? This is like anthropomorphism, only instead of non-human begins, we have two guys with a lot of time on their hands, and instead of the ability to speak the human tongue, they have a keen critic's eye and sly wit for web video critique.

Now, I am more than willing to admit that context is everything for me. If this sort of review had appeared on a site like The Daily Reel, I'd call it well played. Brilliant even. But why, tell me Jesus, is this in the NY Times arts section? I'm all for convergence, but really, like this? Maybe that is like me saying I'm okay with anal rape as long as it doesn't happen to me, but all of this makes me understand the outcry amongst Austrian coffee house intellectuals over the introduction of newspapers when it was said that the appearance of so many varied topics will only result in everything losing its meaning. The same argument is applied to Internet news sources where one can catch up on the latest car bomb attack with one eye, while the other orb scans the dets of Anna Nicole Smith's autopsy and OH MY GOD is Bragelina getting fat! At first I found this thought off putting and precious, but now I get it.

Part of the problem is, as Mark Cuban already pointed out, big newspapers like the Times oughtn't be covering things that are necessarily temporal. Things like big breaking news events and even viral video are covered with much more precision and timeliness by other web sites devoted solely to such matters. In essence Cuban is the hunky jock who outs himself to the hot former nerd with an eating disorder, reassuring her, Look at you, you're gorgeous. You have it all, you just can turn me un-gay. Stick to what you're good at: letting the men's basketball team have their drunken way with you. Or something like that.

Is it me, or is it a sign of the times when our collective interests can leap from opera to classical music performance to web video in one fell swoop? What are we to make of our cultural standing that now includes YouTube (on the cusp of getting its own verb a la Google or Facebook) as a legitimate art form? It seems to me that we are now practicing the circumnavigational habits of the men of yore by going so far backwards that we end up ahead. And at our helm is a mahogany bust of Virginia Heffernan.

Awful, Awful, Awful

This site is turning very morose. It was reported this morning that Bob Clark, director of "A Christmas Story" and his twenty-two year old son were killed when a drunk driver collided with their car last night on the PCH.

First Darren McGavin died last year, and now this.

Just think, where would we all be without our yearly 24 hours of "A Christmas Story"? As the story goes, Bob was a lot more involved in the creation than one might suspect. According to local lore:

In the late 1960s, “A Christmas Story” director Bob Clark was driving to a date’s house when he happened upon a broadcast of radio personality and writer Jean Shepherd’s recollections of growing up in Indiana in the late ’30s and early ’40s. Clark wound up driving around the block for almost an hour, glued to the radio until the program was over.

“My date was not happy,” Clark said, but he knew right away he wanted to make a movie out of the stories, many of which first appeared in Playboy magazine and were collected in Shepherd’s 1966 book, “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.”

Clark’s adaptation, however, didn’t happen overnight. At the time, he was a journeyman director who specialized in low-budget B movies. For years Clark tried to find a studio to finance the film. But none were interested. Nevertheless, Clark held on to his ambition to bring Shepherd’s stories to the screen, and, in 1981, he directed Porky’s. Which became a hit at the box office. Suddenly he had some clout the bargain with. In the wake of that hit the studio want a sequel to Porky’s. Clark agreed to make a sequel if the studio agreed to let him do “A Christmas Story” first.

Thanks, Bob.