Deep Stretching for Lovers of TV Serial Fiction

The Next Thing

2010-11-08T10:53:00.001-08:00

I've been looking through old journals, poetry, posturing, rambling and whatnot, and I understand better why I made particular decisions I made. Stepping away from engineering was a choice made out of contempt for security. My young mind wondered what adventure, what truth in precarious existence there was to be found in making sure things function, in developing models or materials to provide definitive answers for questions poised within clearly defined parameters (my somewhat older mind understands that these bids for security, in actuality, embody a great many clever and novel compromises, including those on a philosophical level which will never enable us to step away from the implacable enormity of our material existence). How could anyone be so sure of anything, as engineers pretend to be? My rush to the opposite was dramatic... what is less sure than dance, an art that falls apart the very instant after its execution, the art that aspires most directly to the irrecoverable innocence of any given moment and that pretends no grasp on posterity? An art that looks no further than the very site of our being for its medium? This commitment to things that fall apart was a shock: stunning, life-instilling, mind-altering, unsustainable. I wanted to live in this space of perpetually falling, and I fell perpetually, sometimes with a joy that was larger than my mind and body and radiated out of me into allness, ecstasy, divine arrest; sometimes into a depressed stillness that saw only blackness, without a single fingerhold to seize in effort to pull myself towards some positive potentiality; sometimes, and perhaps most perplexing of all, into normality, this place where things refused to move with momentous intent, where I was unhappy and confused with a world that could be utterly enchanted in one moment and so indifferent the next.

Many other things and feelings happened which do not serve this narrative, which moves next to the subject of yoga. Here, a practice which would bring you to the same site of art as dance, and yet ask that you do not understand that site as separate from normality. A practice to slow and, at times, remove perception, to bump up against the wild and ecstatic and allow it to be subsumed by the quotidian which, upon closer examination, is not quotidian but perpetually miraculous, and yet... perching upon the tension between the two and chuckling. Locating the self within in the self, instead of relative to art or your society. This is not how the practice appealed to me at first (it appealed first through the promise of exercise, improved physical prowess, discipline, repetition, quietness of mind), though I am able to say now that this is what was happening all along. It was the natural next step if I was to avoid annihilating myself, "deranging all my senses," as some radical artists and poets (it was arthur rimbaud who said that) may do.

And so the practice of yoga continues, at times tripping into solipsism but, I hope, for the most part integrating itself into existence, making it possible for me to remain solid instead of living as one disappearing, or one who moves through the world a raw wound to its meaningless bumps and changes of direction. Teaching is nice, it helps me define what for me is at the center of asana practice. Interesting that I write so little these days, I wonder if there is something in acting that does not an essay, a blurb, a journal entry love.

The relief of sitting in meditation

2010-04-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

The work I do in yoga asana is not limited to the physical envelope. It reveals, very gradually, the layers beneath; perhaps I am like an onion. I sit, and the mind itself sets the body’s channels to unclogging, the joints to listen, loosen and the prana to MOVE. I sat and practiced alternate nostril breathing, nadi shodhana. It was frustrating. Maddening. It did not work. Until afterwards, when I sit here and my nostrils are mighty and the breath scampers joyfully. An element of this breath practice I’d overlooked is that of resistance. Like swinging with a donut in the on-deck circle, restricting airflow to one nostril gives the full breath the benefit of relative freedom: wild, unharnessed, speedy and effortless.

Seated, I imagined my spine a tree. This is not so long a stretch, if you consider the spine a house for the body’s delicate, juice-filled neurons. As I sat in meditation, the left side of my tree flourished, steeped in verdant green energy and branching, growing, very happily. Particular to my body is a very drastic difficulty in breathing through the right nostril, perhaps the result of a broken nose or simply years of habitual left-nostril breathing (these things happen). The right side of my spinal tree was blown over, stripped as by hurricane, leaving a complete picture of a tree traumatized, recovering splendidly on one half but bearing still the dead marks of some powerful event. Imagery arose unbidden. I pictured my right body enlivened by the energy of the left, sprouting and growing its own sap-filled branches, recovering, reassuming the fullness promised by the original seed.

In the meantime, the body pulsed with joy at the sensation of living. Layers of restraint fell from those joints and muscles upon which the mind had clamped. The body pulsed with the heart, and this had its own effect on the vision which, despite the stillness and relaxedness of the eyeballs, saw flux in the boundaries and depths of things, punching forward and receding, as though the chair and the tiled floor were humming some peculiar tune of their own devising. The result of this feeling, present to immediacy and quiet in the mind, was like sitting at the base of a waterfall. What at first is joy and delight continues on unceasing, pummeling, and it instills fear at the largeness of the thing, the continuity and timelessness of it, and you sitting there are nothing besides a speck en route to annihilation. The mind would like to step out; the sensations of the body—fullness, aliveness, fleshiness, full of demands—continue to clamor as they grow in both joy and terror such that any distraction would be welcome, but you are confronted regardless that this thing, this movement, is the only thing, and you can make arabesques and sleep-over fort towers with the mind but never escape the truth that you are being worked on, worn away, eroded. And so you stay with that person, the one sitting beneath the waterfall, for as long as you can stand it because you imagine it makes you close to something that you will never know but that—unquestionably, it vibrates through all of time and appears as the 10^-10 percentage of error in whatever it is we try to measure—is larger than our selves, thereby instilling faith, at the very least, in our ignorance.

It stops when you stop. You stand up and brush off your thighs and stretch out your knees and feel the body change back to day-to-day mode, and you’re exhausted, like you just had a fantastic workout. The mind picks up and everything picks up and you’re back off to the races, perhaps affirmed in the fact of your solidness, your participation in the abstract constant of movement and the perpetuity of the world you perceive in realms outside your perception.

Snippet Overheard on Philly Streets of the Day

2009-06-19T05:40:00.001-07:00

Gap-toothed white beard to his young and burdened protege:

"Because time keeps on movin, like a bird, flyin from one place, to another."

Hangover

2009-06-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a movie that lives up to its name. I had a pretty good time, I think, and now I feel kind of sick.

The movie is a vomitous splurge of humor in its many variations, most notably funny and not funny, though the possibility does exist to break the jokes down further into categories like stupid, unsubtle, or artfully constructed. Vomitous and uncontrolled. The opening image left me with hope: a Kill Bill-esque desert landscape with a busted car and some effed up dudes who LOST THE GROOM during a bachelor party. It seemed edgy and sinister enough at the moment, but hindsight says maybe it was just the music. Anyway, after some dicks and asses and making fun of the fat guy who is also stupid, the movie finally gets around to the absurdity in which it thrives: the predictably ruined hotel room, complete with chicken, tiger, and lots of other stuff. The amnesiac detective narrative frame serves the movie well and keeps gags moving, stackin 'em up on top of each other as things start to get a little bit funny and Mike Tyson lays out the stupid fat guy with a wicked right hook. All of the men find the empowerment they really needed by the end of the film, so don't worry, just like we shouldn't worry that every other character in the 'adventure' narrative is a token: "hey guys if we make the black guy a drug dealer, the asian an evil sniveling queer, and the woman a whore who is also a really sweet girl, we're totally spinning this thing! also let's say retard an uncomfortable number of times."

I'm kind of shocked the Philly Inquirer reviewer was waxing lyrical about this film. The "Citizen Kane" of bender movies!??!?! Because it's well shot, in the desert, and has a pretty sweet arc beginning with alienation and ending with exhaustion? Yes, funny. Yes, rolicking. Yes, possessed of the bachelor party milieu. No, nothing distinguishing, besides it may leave you feeling a little bit filthier. Good show, Hangover, for truth in advertising.

CYBORGS ON NETWORK TV!

2009-05-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

I like "Chuck." I like it a lot. To catch allo'y'all up as quickly as possible: chuck is a geek loser working very hard at the "buymore," an electronics superstore, to not live up to his genius-level potential until one day an experimental supercomputer called "The Intersect" is implanted in his brain granting him access to the ultimate intelligence database by way of "flashes" -- unwrapping of said intelligence into his conscious mind through a visual trigger -- which results in the government deploying two crack agents and a lot of fancy hardware to protect "The Asset" from an ambiguous axis-of-evil type secret group known as Fulcrum, priority 1, as well as to take advantage of his capabilities in saving the world, priority 2. One of the agents is a "perfect dime piece" as my brother might say, and she and Chuck fall in love but are separated by the official nature of their relationship and the endlessly unfolding hijinx as can be imagined per the show's premise. A delightfully entertaining mix of comic book high-geek secret agent shit with great bufoonery from the employees of the buymore with a heart-warming alternative family drama (Chuck and sister were abandoned by father at a young age and I'm pretty sure the mom died at some point. Chuck, sis, and sis's fiance all live together).

Now, the meat. Chuck is a modern cyborg. His brainspace has been invaded completely. He works through the machine; the machine works through him. This doesn't make him into a superman, it makes him into a commodity. He is referred to as "The Asset," he has "handlers," and, most importantly, Chuck's central struggle is not in saving the world--that comes secondarily--it is in asserting his person-ness in the face of the both fulcrum and the government's attempts to pack him up and pull the computer out of his head.

The show is borderline subversive in the way it handles this drama: Chuck's humanity is repeatedly threatened, and he wins every time without even trying, without exaggerated gestures of heroism and, mostly importantly, without violence. It's as if, at the moment the machine inhabited him to the extent that he was no longer Chuck, some protector's spirit rose up and out, ceding the flesh to unlock life in the machine and destroying the machine's rational, binary perfection. A real cyborg! This protector's spirit follows Chuck through all of his unlikely trials and smites all the clowns that would mistake a fellow man for an object to be treated as less than human.

Telling also that the setting for Nick Bottom and Peter Quince's descendents is an electronics superstore. The employees make a circus of corporate america, turning a warehouse of a shop on steroids into a village. The goods and geekeries transformed into symbols of status, as opposed to the more common reality of symbols stripped and sold, which is something we witness daily.

Watch chuck! It's awesome!

Susan, Susan, Susan

2009-04-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

From cigarette lighter to iPod charger to iPod to radio input to speakers, a podcast sounds in the cavity of an automobile barreling down the highway at eighty miles per hour.

(paraphrase)
IRA GLASS: How did you react when you saw the clip of Susan Boyle in Britain's Got Talent?

SOME RADIO GUY: Oh, I totally got choked up, which, you know, just made me wonder about my own ethical outlook... that I should be surprised to such a reaction, when the only difference is how the woman looks.

Ok, so some effete, liberal intellectual on NPR has his values challenged in a kind of wake-up call about the actualities of cultural perception. "I know that all human beings are equally capable regardless of race and appearance, so I am wrong for reacting emotively to her performance. The television people are manipulating my sentiment for the sake of entertainment and thereby cheapening one of my dearly held democratic principles."

Hey! This isn't about you, NPR guy.

I've heard the sentiment elsewhere: why should people be so surprised that she can sing just because she isn't a pop star? What's the big deal?

Well, for starters, this isn't about the triumph of an ugly person getting on TV and SHOCKING everyone by being able to sing. The drama is a different one entirely: Susan Boyle broke all the rules of the game, and there's nothing we all love more than a very small dose of liberation.

What she did was tear down the dramatized definitions of success and achievement upon which shows like "Got Talent" and "Idol" prey. They are venues for humiliation of the have-nots and the glamorification of the haves, operating under the shoddy narrative pretext that reaching for the stars and attaining your dreams means winning over completely the hearts and minds of your audience--nay! the world!

Then along comes this woman who is solitary and well-adjusted at 47. Scooby says "ruhwhaaaa?" She has been singing since she was 12. She did not display an ounce of regret regarding anything, and, as her performance speaks for itself, she obviously has been active in her practice of voice. She didn't need "Got Talent," though it certainly must have been a large and exciting venue for her. She was not participating in some manufactured achievement narrative for the unrealized.

And herein lies the juice, the game-breaking elements. All of the tension and effort and pound-your-head-against-a-wall striving that the shows stoke for drama and ratings are stripped away and performance becomes more than a nice voice and a pretty song. In an environment of dull, sniping, and insecure drudgery, a simple, sincere thing sings liberation, and our hearts are warmed.

Am I so naive as to think some producers didn't have an inkling as to what they were doing when they let Ms. Boyle pass by wardrobe and makeup? No, not so naive. But what that does make this, as far as I'm concerned, is one fantastic piece of television in the last place you'd expect to find it.

Kinesthetic Learning

2009-03-09T14:40:00.001-07:00

For some people yoga is an experience, for others an Experience. Some call it a workout, others "stretching," others a yuppy pile of horseshit. Regardless of your perspective, there are some nuts and bolts of repeated practice which, if you are savvy, you can connect to other aspects of your existence in the world, as anyone willing to learn does with any sustained practice.

I'm in headstand in class the other day, and I receive an adjustment from the teacher. With her index finger, she pushes my shins maybe two inches back in space, aligning the posture to its intended form in which the legs rise in a perpendicular line from the floor. Two inches help, and all of the hellishly difficult and unnecessary work my musculature and mind were exerting to maintain a shape not quite in accord with skeletal structure and gravity fell away. Being inverted is a tremendous joy. You hit the right spot on the top of your skull--engaging your locks, hugging your leg muscles to the bone, aligning mindfully--and there is an exhilarating sensation of lightness and effortlessness. As easy as standing, except upside down, and for those moments you are granted the liberated perspective of limitless potential, having shattered the incorrect perception that when we are standing, we are right-side up.

For some people, myself included, this is how they learn. The moral of the story is not the joy of headstand, it is the action of getting there: a situation in which tremendous, concerted effort and a touch of fear at tumbling over maintains a shape that is not quite right, when a bit more ease and attention is all that lacking to be where you want to be. This is a worthwhile lesson, taught through a physical practice, and it bleeds into everything else I do. Skittering about in a panic trying to organize all my junk for work then rehearsal then two hour break then class then rehearsal then... I remember floating into headstand, and it helps me get out of my own way.

Bodies are intelligent.

Excitement, Minutiae, and Deadwood

2009-02-26T09:03:00.000-08:00

I. shwoo!

II. I sat the other day and noticed that for the duration of the inhale, my heart rate increases slightly. I notice also that after recognizing the increase in rate, it is possible to bring awareness to the lack of balance and smooth the inconsistencies of the heart over both inhale and exhale.

Possible understanding for this most interesting phenomenon: the act of being creates a sensation of anxiety, excitement, anticipation, trepidation... while the act of expiration brings calm. A recommended course of action may be to find a little bit of death in life, a smattering of life in death, in order to encounter each new moment from solid ground with expansive perspective, emptied of fear.

III. Al Swearengen is a king, EB a coward, Bullock a principled hothead, and Saul an even Jew. Alma is beshrewed and Tricksy, an unyielding whore. Natural that the theater comes to town, we needed a jester to fill out the Shakesperean cast, especially given that the dullard got his skull kicked in. The monologues and asides, speaking to ghosts and heads, playing politics that spiral out of control into moral whirlwinds of catastrophic proportion... all grand theater. All curiously sustained in this televised medium, where violence and shock rush in to fill the empathetic gap left in the absence of kinesthetics and physical immediacy. Oh, inverted clauses! We are stimulated despite ourselves. The trickling of language, crystal-clear and refined, sprayed over the dirtiest of man-making, world-building settings.

Man and Machine

2009-02-22T18:35:00.000-08:00

THESIS: A mindful, high-mileage relationship with one's bicycle brings a person into more exact synchronicity with space and time, engendering a still, vibrant, and deeply fulfilling experience of reality.

ARGUMENTS:

Let us define mindful pedalling as a stroke in which the force between foot and pedal remains equally balanced between left and right through repeated revolutions. The mental and physical focus required to maintain mindful pedalling is extensive, and explodes the mind with the infinite complexities of a simple, one-principle task. For example, you may discover a remarkable lightness of being as the mind trips over the flip point between push (downstroke, extension of the knee joint) and pull (upstroke, flexion of the knee joint), again and again and again.
The muscles of the legs are toned, making everything better.
With proper posture, the spine is lengthened and shoulders opened, allowing greater ease of breath and increased lung capacity.
The bicycle is by and large a silent vehicle, making it suitable for investigative stalking trips, assassination trips, or other general ninja use.
All of the muscles of the body are warmed, increasing flow of blood, energy, and fresh air through the channels of the body, inducing a cheery disposition and happier perception of the world.

COUNTER ARGUMENTS:

Reckless bicycle riding may lead to death, especially in an urban environment
Fucking flat tires.

CONCLUSIONS: Reiterate thesis.

yes! headstands!

blunt trauma to the haunch

2009-02-05T14:39:00.000-08:00

Begin! [click]

chptr 1

last night upon exiting the meditation workshop perhaps a little more enlightened i discovered the back tire of my bicycle was flat. i had important things to do so I thought not and mounted, after which I rode approximately twenty feet down Parrish St. before my rear wheel kicked out to the left over a patch of ice. i suspended briefly, the movement of the bike frame being very sudden, and the body rotated counterclockwise through both the sagittal and transverse planes, after which the right haunch impacted unceremoniously with road ice coated with perhaps an eigth of an inch of well-mixed road slush. the bottle of bourbon ($23.29) did not break. ask me why i imagined my dainty road bike had transformed into a skidoo while i sat and breathed with my friends and teachers, and i will tell you i don't know. my compatriots were headed to their cars, perhaps a little more enlightened, and they expressed their concern for my person. placing my bike in the snowbank snug against a parking meter and encompassing bike frame, rear wheel, and meter pole with my U-lock, i accepted a ride home with lindsey. we discussed consciousness, vibration, showing up to parties just because you have to, the qualities of a few of our classmates (obliquely), and the buddha.

at lizzie's house we consumed one half of a ginger cake, one orange, 4 generous whiskeys, and two episodes of deadwood in which not overly much happened.

End! [click]

Arrested Development

2009-01-29T11:57:00.000-08:00

is a program deeply loved by those with whom I roll.

My introduction to the Bluths was scattershot. The first episode I saw was the one where the giant guy flies the handicapped uncle-type guy around. The in-joking and the absurdity were smug and off-putting, and though I now recognize them as elements of brilliance, first impressions are enduring.

The entire. ever. lovin. series. is just one long joke, which is a premise claiming predecessors as notable as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Catch 22, and The Infinite Jest. The doilies and wondrously interconnected celebrations of shock and awe from nothingness dig right in to the heart of Humor, and damn this show is funny. And what an experiment to perform on televised media! This is as "forward-thinking" or "experimental" as network television will ever get.

RETURNS

2009-01-27T06:36:00.000-08:00

Posts I owe THE BLOGOSPHERE:

Arrested Development
Deadwood
Grey's Anatomy

These, though worthy of great discussion, do not comprise my mission today. Nay, my purpose runs deeper, like a torrential underground chasm, or a cosmic tsunami wrecking house in the fifth dimension. A mystery, whispering odd vibrations and anxieties to the body in idle moments.

I went back to Azeroth.

For you noobs who don't know what that means, it means that after a year-long struggle with addiction and two and a half years clean, I took a taste of the virtual crack some deign to call the WORLD OF WARCRAFT, to see what it would do me.

The game is still the game. Quest-lines and story-boarding have been streamlined; there's less pointless running around and time wasted in travel; you can mount up at level 30; the new content is varied, fun, and challenging. New world areas are incredibly tightly designed. Most importantly, the continued refinement and balance of different character classes has created even better tools which grant users extensive control in interacting with the virtual world, which means more freedom and creativity. Blizzard has really learned as they've gone, not to mention the whole venture takes on a new sort of meaning when ELEVEN AND A HALF MILLION people are paying monthly to play the game.

Basically, you get to pretend you're living Lord of the Rings. You work for power and stature in this impossibly huge virtual world with its own living economy. You efficiently manage a set of abilities to slay evil and to achieve goals set before you by the game's writers, whether epic (get twenty-four of your friends into a group and slay the lich king!) or trivial (go pick some flowers for me!). You combat other players for loot and glory. You can spend hours not moving and fishing. Watching a bobber on the ocean, and clicking on it to pull in the fish. Literally.

I'm endlessly captivated. It's funny, the addictive element hasn't really surfaced, probably because I have honest-to-god responsibilities and sustaining commitments in my life, as opposed to times past, and the pull to "win" the game, to get all of the best gear and kill the hardest bosses, has lessened in the face of perspective.

The bottom line for me is this: we have language and tools to create simulacra of the world. It's like TV, except you're IN it. It's part creationary--your avatar is not you, you get to define the terms of the character as well as its actions--but it also incorporates that strange and life-like element of risk, in which you don't know exactly what repercussions your actions will have and you can see, in patterns rising from the foundational elements of the "game," the potential to build something.

Fuller Arrangements

2008-12-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

In my most recent post, I spoke disparagingly of "Pushing Daisies," the latest brainchild of Bryan Fuller, creator of such gems as "Dead Like Me" and "Wonderfalls." I wrote erroneously.

"Pushing Daisies" does things no other television shows dares. Mostly that simply means it is highly imagined and stylized. Yes, the show at its worst is quite twee, occasionally saccharine, and at times it gets a little bit stuck for being so cute and clever, and yet there is something completely delightful about the risks taken--characters repeating voice-over narration; unabashed wordplay and rhythmic exchanges; splashingly vibrant sets and costumes. In the most recent episode, a full minute of airtime is dedicated to one of the actresses belting away at Eternal Flame by the Bangles, to hilariously obvious "did they really?"-type interruptions after the "say my name" lyric. There was a scene with an entire class full of boarding school boys lured to the kitchen after midnight by the scent of a pie, cooked by the young protagonist because he longed for the scent of home. Eventually the entire kitchen is fired up, pies and filling fly and each and every boy has a berry smear on his face. I hope that if a show could contain an image as wonderful as this in every episode, it would be an enormous success.

My problems occurred when the dramatic tension went slack. Nothing colorful for the goofball team of lovers, dreamers, and investigators to engage in. But recently, shit from their history is coming up, and colorful new characters are being introduced, such as Chuck's dad, recently reincarnated and wrapped in bandages. I wonder if there is room for a show like this--any of Bryan Fuller's shows, really, as of yet none have made it out of season 2--on network television. What I really want is "Wonderfalls" back on the air, but since that can't happen, maybe Fuller can sell a grittier version of his vision to the cable networks, which is the only place good television that is not also a soap opera can live a long, unslaughtered life.

The Reinvigorating Breath

2008-12-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

Life, my friends, is not like television; nay, not even a long-form, decompressed version of television. Television is television, and I am generally disenchanted with this mysterious medium that so many consume rapaciously. I doubt, who hoped to champion! Is there value to be found in lessons viewed? How does the low art interact with immediacy? Can it be better than sheer escapism?

Explorations best left for another day, because right now is time for the lowest low-down, the skinny, the truth summarized and pre-packaged (individually wrapped) as it emerges coyly from my current viewing queue, which these days is not the average bag. I am consuming piecewise, bite-sized instead of dvd-ified episodic intake, because my netflix is canceled just like Pushing Daisies (and good riddance. as a result of that show I have added the word "twee" to my vocabulary).

The Office. A rare example of a good show staying good. Sure, they mix in a clunker every now and then, but I can not call to mind a show that creates more moments with staying power. I still remember the warehouse basketball game, Dwight and Michael and their secret powow at Staples, the bat, Pam alone in the office calling her mother over the whole Jim thing, the first time we met Andy Bernard... you get the picture. Goddamn does this show have characters. And they keep being flawed and themselves, and they keep coming in to work every day. This is a goddamn television show.

Heroes. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shitty shit shit pile of shit shit. Shit. I watched only a couple episodes of season 1, and then I stopped because there were lots of characters, none of whom possessed consistent traits or motivations. Also, nothing ever happened. Caught the tail end of season 2; it was minimally exciting. There were some good eps in season 3, I swear, but you can see the network brass in the background stoking the fire hot so that the "canceled" brand burns extra hard. Every scene is second guessed. Every character is interchangeable, and even though the actors retain the same faces from one episode to the next, I swear to god they are playing different roles every time I boot up nbc.com. I don't quite understand, because nobody's TRYING to make a really fucking terrible piece of television and I honestly don't give a fuck about the insane plot logic. They're just so confused in trying to cater to ratings and pack as much watchability as is possible into every moment, and as a result, we the viewers get no development or continuity. There is the scattered cool moment--it was AWESOME when Peter's father stole all of his powers and we witnessed evil ascendant, the extent of arthur petrelli's assholedness, familial betrayal... good stuff--in a huge mire of shitty shit shit shit shit.

Mad Men. Baller. Best drama on television bar none.

Chuck. hehehehe! There is nothing to this show but attractive people, a modicum of heart, and a truly foolish gimmick, yet it makes me giggle. Curious.

hoopah! power chords! intercostals!

Whoa.

2008-10-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest. It's hard for us Joe Sixpacks on the wrong side of the pond to think about the Brits as much of anything besides imperial has-beens--the once-rans of being awesomest in the world, fish-sticky knobbledy-toothed funny talkers with blistering red coats, football which is actually soccer, and the bee's honey.

Now, I have encountered a series which will enlighten the average American as to the errors of these misconceptions. I concede they are still British, but they're clever.

DOCTOR WHO!

Maybe you're not into the sci-fis. Maybe you think: "God all British people ever talk about is that stupid show. Aren't there ALIENS? Isn't there TIME TRAVEL? Ahhh, I can't stand it already. Buy me a cheeseburger!"

The time travel works because they don't try to explain it, beyond "you can't go back on your personal time line." Divert, divert, divert. Aliens work because they're surprisingly imaginative and well-designed. As the show goes on, there are less aliens and more non-corporeal beings standing in metaphorically as aspects of human nature. Which is fun, and offers a surprising degree of contemplative thematic meat for a raucous space adventure. "Ugh, Turn on Gossip Girl," you say, "it's just like the OC except without the moralistic didacticism!" (mental transcript ends here. subject falls into an electronically induced state of ennui, cynicism, despondency, or value-corruption toxicity)

And characters. The Doctor is an archetypal epic hero. Epic epic, as in last of the Time Lords, universal wanderer, civilization saver, reformed pacifist, defender of everything, tragedy being he is doomed to be alone for all of time. He picks up young, doe-eyed women who grow to see themselves through the Doctor's eyes and understand that they're special, too, and that all of persistent humanity is special. All very heart-warming, and in SPACE, with a time machine.

It's pulpy, full-on whimsical, and yet has no shame in tackling Big Questions like what are we doing here? is humanity fundamentally good? how many times in one show can we use small-scale explosion and smoke effects? Granted, it doesn't always pose these questions RESPONSIBLY, ie in the manner we're taught Art that is Great SHOULD pose questions, but how unrealistic is that? No individual can take everything into account, physics and the wikinets tell us no one person can actually know more than a tiny eetsy little bit and that bit is ever-changing, so let's throw caution to the wind, my friends, and get our hands dirty. Isn't that what our contemporaneity is all ABOUT? Toss out paralytic reverence, let's teach ourselves that we're capable.

Yes! headstands! adho mukha svanasana!

The Crazy Show

2008-09-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

airing on the MYLIFE network is entering syndication for at least a month or so! Reruns and no stress, this news coming from the suits upstairs and if there's anything I've learned in my life, it's always trust the man in the suit.

Now, I've been thinking a lot lately. Deep, deep thoughts, resonating from my most internal depths which I have PLUMBED--at great personal effort to myself, and with mighty tolls and tribulations on my person--and I have RECEIVED and calmed them. Let me tell you, these thoughts, as they perch here retrieved and resigned in my pretty head, they are in fact DEEP.

I am thinking, "all I ever do in this blog is write something when I get excited about a TV show." And the next thought, which follows the first, is "THAT IS OK! YOU ARE EXCITED BY A TV SHOW!" But not that way. No, no, no, not that way.

MAD MEN. Oh, season 2 has been a landscape of gently rolling disappointment spotted with the occasional "oh yeah that's kind of cool" copse. Until now. Episode 7 was an EARTHQUAKE but one that is not dangerous just delicately and awesomely terrain-altering.

Just the final moment of the show and we can be done. Betty and Don for the first time confronted by the consequences/horror of their success, or maybe more accurately, their belief in it as corroborated by all observers. So artfully done. Questions by the child: "Mommy, are we rich?" "It's not polite to talk about money, sweetheart." Purchase of an exorbitantly expensive and sweet-ass caddy as in Cadillac, baby. Don just got invited by his boss into the "people who get to decide what happens in this world" club. And then BAM, Jimmy Berrett hits on Betty like crazy and tells her Don is fucking his wife. And she knows it might be true. And then Jimmy tells Don what a shithead he is. And HE knows it might be true.

Then they sit in the brand new caddy--the one they won't let kids in unless the rugrats have washed their hands--just looking terrible, and not talking, and you, the viewer, are wondering what the hell are they going to say. AWESOME FACES OF DISCOMFORT.

Betty pukes. Cue Brenda Lee... "Break it... to me gently..." roll the credits. I loved it. I am just so tickled.

Headstands!

The Sounds of Your Own Voice

2008-08-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

A wop bop a loo-mop, a wop bam boom!

Tutti frutti, my friends. Tutti frutti. I'm dancin' these days, and man do the days get longer, the breaths deeper, and the abyss more terrifying as you approach SHOWTIME. No need for all that really, but it happens nonetheless. Between all the working and drinking--by working I mean hopping lifting and swaying, in time; by drinking I mean to excess--there just ain't no place for nothing else.

Well I am a liar. I have also re-entered Oblivion (god help me i am prideful fool i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry) and watched more WEEDS and MAD MEN. I was checking out at the grocery store the other day and lo and behold! on the magazine rack resteth the TV GUIDE MAGAZINE. Now, I hate TV Guide for their Fox news-like stand against the writer's strike, but on the cover of this dirty rag was the following headline:

MAD MEN. THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION?

And the first thing that popped into my head was a "yes," the kind with the brow crunch and "obviously" intonation. There is something so gd... HILARIOUS about their protagonist. He is just REALLY serious all the time that it's like, all the other stilted period dialogue is set into theatro-surrealistic-comic relief. It's brilliant and compelling and seems extra real for being so fake. If there are any Alice Munro fans out there, it reminds me of how lasting her characters are even after you close the book. Really, it's not just Don that has that effect. Also Betty and Peggy, these actors are in no way fucking around. I don't know what it is, maybe being "period" allows you to be serious and theatrical without being Six Feet Under. If you like some of your fiction televised, you have every reason to be watching this show. Man, and they dig in deep with the advertising. The reach of media was beginning to be understood back then (in a codified, marketable way) and is STILL a burgeoningly relevant issue today. The writers never forget that the theme is what makes the show so interesting to watch, and that we can deal with Don being such a brooding alcoholic because of it: what speaks to us, what lies, and how do we sell it?

There is a bunch of who is sleeping with who in the first season (also fun, and handled in a not distracting way) but so far season two is sticking with a slightly less compressed reality and the actors are just hitting their stride.

Buzam!

Scenic World

2008-07-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

I wrote earlier that the second season of Weeds left me chilly. Well, buckaroos, have I got some good news for you! It gets all crazy and super-well-put-together again!

The premise is imaginative, zany, and impossible, but not impossible enough to fall outside the realm of some alternate universe naturalism. All of this is relatively unimportant. The pay-off, for me at least, is straight-up whimsy, that bizarro varietal of comfort which convinces, however briefly, that anything is possible.

They put together this ass-kicking montage of Nancy--suburban mom turned drug-lord protagonist--and her new reality: working retail in a maternity store, the legit front for a drug business over which she no longer has control. The execution was completly outside the normal mode of the show--the use of voice-over; the faux-conclusiveness; the solemnity--and you could just feel Nancy drying up, the intensity of her frustration. Moments like that make you realize how deep she got into it, what a terrible, corrupt person she is, but also how much she loved it, nay! how much she needed it. Cut back to the present, as Nancy closes up shop, and there's a thumping in the back room. Nancy enters to find... a man emerging from a tunnel to Mexico, trapped under a pile of boxes. He yells in Spanish, telling her not to put boxes there, ever again, and the camera follows as he walks back into the tunnel. We see crews of filthy diggers, lanterns, and drugs in maternity store bags as the guy walks back yelling instructions. Cue some awesome, kind of bubbly imagination land music and Nancy, that adorable risk-junkie, goes straight down the all but literal rabbit hole with only a moment's pause for wonderment, sticking her head in where she doesn't belong all over again but knowing, a little better this time, exactly what that may entail.

Awesome character moment, awesome music (you just have to trust me), and a perfect example of a show being true to its fundamental roots as an experiment in fantasy.

Door-A

2008-07-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok! Ok!

Long time no chat, compatriadres, and what a sad state of affairs THAT is. I laze, I neglect, I dance, I watch, I yoga... why do I not BLOG (or WORK)?

But really, the why's don't matter. The world is just going to end up covered in massive landfills, anyway... or so PIXAR's new feature Wall-E would have you believe! Much like this guy, no this guy, up top! I found something a little bit OFF with the whole project. Now, I like me a flick that champions the finer sentiments as much as the next guy--finer sentiments in this particular case being, well... sentimentality, musicals, pluck, and hand-holding ("If you want to communicate something to the proletariat, dress it in sequins and make it sing!")--but really? A dystopia of fat people floating around in chairs, sucking on nutrish-o shakes and dependent on robots, it smacks of a lack of originality to me. People don't just sit around. We make stupid choices and exercise rampant disregard for our environment, perhaps even possess a lemming-like quality of two, but we do stuff. You can't just lazy-boy out the curiosity factor.

The love story is classic. For reasons we can not understand, be they spiritual, chemical, or mechanical, Wall-E makes a choice: he wants to hold the probe's hand. Obstacles are placed in Wall-E's path, but his faith and determination not only grant him love's desire, they change the entire face of the earth!

Cool. And very sweet because Wall-E has an awesome apartment and is a real trooper. But wait a second... they're androids! Did anybody else get heeby-jeebied when they smooched and we got nothing besides a metallic clank and happy robot faces? Funny, or not? How about when Wall-E, like some twisted Frankenstein, tore the feet from his fellow trashbot and sutured them to his own determined little gears?

Ok so the whole thing is kinda meta, but that eery tone (oh super sweet! but, uh, is that supposed to be sweet? is it just a bad joke?) gets lost in the context of the 'fat humans are dumb but not beyond redemption' B-story. It's a film about learning to be human, but frankly I'd rather take the lesson from some talking penguins.

Yes! Headstands!

Oh Canada

2008-06-22T17:27:00.001-07:00

I've mentioned Slings & Arrows a few times before, but probably not with sufficient awe and reverence. This show is consistent and surprising, which is like the holy grail of television.

The British model for a drama series, and apparently the Candian structure as well, is six episodes. In America it seems to be either 13 or 23, and I think the main dramatic thrust gets serious dilution when you need to fill so much air time. With six, each and every episode is based around the same 'A' storyline. No need to put up with entire episodes based around so and so who you never really cared about. A season of Slings & Arrows, for example, is about a specific production in a yearly theater festival, and that is what is going on every time you tune in. Sure, The Wire had 13 eps a season, but that show was effin' epic.

I've been watching S & A and Weeds in tandem. Cutting one drug with a slightly different varietal in the hopes that it will dilute the potency of each, risk being that I will get powerfully addicted to both. So far I'm cool, especially because the second season of Weeds is kinda choking. Nancy pants is going through this whole "ooh, look what I can get away with now that I'm a drug dealer" thing and just being a really terrible terrible parent. I guess it's pretty ok, especially the bits where she plays the DEA boyfriend against her lovestruck business partner for titillating dramatic tension, but they just went off the deep end in the part of the show that deals with family matters. Maybe it's just the dialogue, which got away with being clunky in season 1 somehow, because it was cute, but when you need to bring your a-game in season 2 and prove you can last in harsh post-novelty climes without the benefit of concept and character enfatuation, the half-wittedness just don't seem to fly any longer.

So, seriously, if you're in the game for some sustained and complicated dramatic action, netflix or pirate from the high electronic seas a copy of Slings and Arrows. They don't do dippy, and if you're a performer, like myself, it digs pretty deep into questions of poetic faith and worthiness/lack thereof of the artistic pursuit.

The Return of Television

2008-06-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

A sudden bout of downtime settles over me, like a shot of tequila on an empty stomach. I love tequila, but "settle over" is all wrong. I mean SHOOTS THROUGH MY UNPROTECTED VEINS AND CAPILLARIES WITH RAPACIOUS VIOLENCE.

Accordingly, I have gorged myself on my backlog of television shows. Oh, the Weeds, the Slings & Arrows of outrageous fortune which encourage me to take arms against a sea of trouble! Also I am listening to "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap on repeat. For like two days. Mmm, whatcha say?

Confession time, this is one of those periods of self-imposed cabin fever during which I write lots of Important Things on index cards, make faces in the mirror, and hatch ingenious schemes like the creation of a "Naked Guy" vlog and figuring out how to make the Altar of Entropy do some serious journalistic work in the alternate universe of WoW. Just do it, Gerrit, you'll thank me later. I'll totally come to Brooklyn to intervene in three months (the amount of time I expect it will take you to create level 70 toons on every realm and start brewing a devious conspiracy to overthrow Blizzard). Other activities on my todo list: drink whatever alcohol is in the apartment without repeats; headstands until I black out; handstands until I black out; memorize the lyrics to "Hide and Seek"; prepare absurd greetings for those foolish enough to call me on my telephone.

Anyway, I totally just saw a great moment of television. Finale of the first season of Weeds--Nancy pants has built herself a motherfucking drug empire. She is the big momma, by hook, crook, wit, luck, hotness, and that special courage that can only come from being really really ignorant. They organized a great Godfather-esque scene in which she gathers all her peeps and begins a meeting. Youngest son watches open-mouthed as the double doors are shut on his mother's place of business, knowing that not all is right in suburbia.

Counter this very theatrical scene with Nancy showing up at the Nice Guy's house. You know, the one that has been pursuing her but they could never get together because she is a DRUG DEALER and has problems. She is vulnerable, they take her right off the mystical pedestal built for her--I gotta do an aside here. Anybody else like Dune? You did, because it was AWESOME. At the end you have the motherfucking KWISATZ HADERACH standing on top of the universe. It is a case study in how to make your protagonist Awesome and attain godliness. Ethical, aesthetic, or philosophical problems with this particular narrative aside, everything that happened after that moment in the Dune universe sucked. So way to go Weeds, for jumping that sinking ship.

Anyway, newly vulnerable, human, and relate-to-able Nancy, maybe finding something good and untainted in her life again, gets up to go pee and throws on Nice Guy's robe. Flips on the light... she is wearing a DEA jacket.

God I love it. I love it so much I will go practice arm balances for at least twenty minutes and then drink more beer. Is there an index card with something Important written on it in my future? Cabin fever eightball says: "As I see it, yes!"

BLOG

2008-06-07T21:34:00.000-07:00

Blogging is just so cozy. It's like ordering up a fast food audience, cheap and almost no wait. Sure, maybe you have to imagine the multitudes hanging on your every word--oohing, ahhing, and laughing raucously along with you--but just by doing so you've already got a fatty commiseration sandwich with a side of you're-so-cool. It doesn't necessarily last or lay a healthy foundation for a stronger you of tomorrow, and truth be told it may end up filling you with hot air, but man does it feel good every once in a while.

I thought I was going to sink with that metaphor to the bottom of the sea, so happy was I with it, but as the water began to swirl around my ankles, I quickly realized how foolish it is to cling to such nonsense when my very being is at stake.

I am not watching TV lately. At all. It's funny what happens when you go from a life of routine (in which you don't have to grocery shop or do the dishes) to a life of umpteen possibilities!!!one!eleven!!1!! I loaded up the Grey's anatomy finale on abc.com or whatever, but then something more interesting happened. I started to watch a Battlestar, then realized my clothes only had ten more minutes in the drier at the laundromat 'round the corner. Moving in someplace new takes forever which I somehow manage to forget despite having done it at least a million times. Or is there some deeply seated change afoot? Perhaps it is time I stopped watching, and started writing!?!?!?

Thanks for the coze, yo's.

A Post

2008-06-04T21:13:00.000-07:00

I don't even have a job, and I'm exhausted. I am doing all kinds of work, it's just that there's no reliable paycheck attached to any of it. Not yet. So all I've got in me is a quick rundown.

Slings & Arrows -- This show is amazing, AND Canadian. I know, right? The acting kicks my ass and the script delivers those moments that just tickle me pink. So I get to sit around pink and beat up which is the best kind of existence around. I mean, we have the tortured artist given a second chance to do it right, and he's carrying his old mentor's severed head around in a cooler. Hits the bar, naturally, where he runs into his ex-lover who played Juliet to his Romeo as directed by the head in the cooler. Ellen: "What do you have in there?" Jack: "Oliver's head."

Priceless.

Rhyme of the Contemporary Ne'er-Do-Good

2008-05-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Friends and colleagues, gentiles and heathens, strangers, Romans, and my mom...

Please, if you would, pull a chair nearer to my fire. I have a tale to tell, and though the "Rhyme" element of my advertising may be false, the cautions contained herein are not, and I assure you--you will benefit a thousand fold from the tales of the places of the narrative from the story I am about to tell!

As you definitely must have noticed, I have been gone from the blog-OH!-sphere for untold amounts of time encompassing about two weeks. Two things have happened since then. First, I moved to a house in Philadelphia! Second, Mass Effect!

Mass Effect? you ask, which is exactly what I wanted you to do. What is Mass Effect?

I will tell you!

It is a video game and you go around and save the universe and there are aliens and a stupid stupid gun car called a Mako GOD I hate that stupid car and driving all over the place to flag mineral deposits and salvage the useless cargo from wrecked probes!

Forgive me. You see the state I am in, reduced to a husk of a man by the ravages of addiction, which is what I am really here to talk about.

There was a time, years ago, when I walked in an entirely different world. I shall not name it--it is too large, too terrifying for a name--though perhaps you will discern its nature from my survivor's tale. In this world I was widely respected. People everywhere knew who I was, or could figure very quickly that I was a man to admire. My coffers flowed over with booty. Then, one day, an otherworldly light shone in and in that brilliant light... I saw all my achievements, all my possessions, for what they really were: a meaningless nothing. I knew my life could never be the same.

I announced to all the members of my clan that I was leaving, and they looked upon me as a man dispossessed of his sense. "But where you are going," my dearest friend said, "everyone is a noob!" "Verily, and never again will you froshock froshock ftw!" said my young protege. I felt the need to explain to them what I was doing. "Remember on your dr00d alt, when you finally got travel form and said to yourself, 'fnly i can gets lots of herbs for my pots,' then you just ran, and ran and ran and ran into that brave new world of tomorrow, far away from the creeps and spawns? Well, this is like that, except my travel form will take me away from this place, into a whole new world!"

"dr00d ninrvate lol" they said. "lol" I replied, sadly.

But this transition did not sever my addiction completely. No, it was more like a flummoxed British person who says: "I say good day, sir!" when they are beside themself, but nobody really believes they are offended or leaving because how cute is that British person. And then that person says "oh well, I suppose it was silly of me to explode like that." And so I fed the need for stimulus with lesser addictions, even though the behemoth was shrugged off.

And then I stopped. I took my controller and I put it down, and I was through. You have never seen a more stalwart, more radiantly put-together me in all your days! Travel, education, wonders! The world was mine, and I took it and kneaded it and made delicious European bread, not that soggy mushed up American nonsense!

Had you known me then... you could have loved me. The Mass Effect sucked me in. It is the tool the devil devised specifically for me, knowing I am weak and prideful. And now I am desperately scouring stupid boring planets in a stupid stupid stupid car for Turian Insignias, running around so carelessly a mere Geth Commando might fell my mighty party. I have had more Coors Lite in three days than I consumed in all my days preceding the EFFECT, and were I not equally addicted to yoga, I would assuredly have a formidable beer belly.

The moral, dear friend, is that you must remember, you could end up like me--consuming a breakfast of kiwis and Coors, unable to stand upon your own 2 feet, and probably smelly. I think I'm smelly, I really can't tell. I mean there must be an odor. Maybe it doesn't stink exactly, as much as smell odd.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Why do I keep coming back?

2008-05-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

Television, especially network television, is inconsistent. As good as a show is, as good as its premise and actors are, they put out bad episodes. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons the medium gets no respect. It's just pulp, produced quickly to feed the hungry masses. It's always rushed. There are a million and one things that can go wrong, from network execs coming down hard on character changes a showrunner had planned for two seasons to running production on a shoestring budget.

Definitely, there are times when I ask myself why I keep coming back. Battlestar Galactica, for all the really stunning design and story-telling they did in the mini-series, definitely wallowed in the land of mediocrity. Storylines were good, compelling even, but never as good as they could have been, especially since they were awash in faux-thematic religious babble that rarely translated into interesting drama (one of the tricky things about the sci-fi genre). Eventually, the shine of the CG veneer dulled from many viewings, until I didn't even notice how freaking awesome it looks when a Viper wheels around mid dogfight, and you can see how big space is, how tiny the ship looks, and the sweet-ass physics of the whole operation.

I watched it, I continue to watch it, because Starbuck and Laura Roslin are freaking awesome characters. That is the only reason, and robot fights and the sweet 80s interior of the cylon baseships. These two actors are phenomenal and even in a so-so script, there are moments when their characters surprise me.

In its final (1/2) season, we're getting back to the main storyline of the prophecy of the 13th colony, which thankfully centers largely around these two characters. And the show is getting good again.

The Other Side

2008-05-12T11:53:00.001-07:00

Over the course of my hermitage amongst the strip malls, restaurants, coffee shops, and yoga studios of the suburbs of Boston (which is coming to a close!), much new shit has come to light. You could call it a convalescence of sorts, set off like one of those weird re-usable hot/cold packs by the little metal clicker of my imminent departure.

For example, I'm picking a bunch of dirty plates off of a table of oh-so-delightful guests, who decide the best time to chat me up is just after I've loaded up with about thirty pounds of plateware which is beginning to deposit sauce down my shirtfront as the melting ice cream floods ceramic reservoirs. Normally I would not allow myself to be caught in such a compromising position, but it was Mother's Day, busiest restaurant day of the year. I was well into my eleventh hour of the ol' non-stop non-stop, and I was too shell-shocked to tell more hungry people--the stupidest people in the world and no, neither you nor I are an exception--what they were going to eat, when they were going to get it, and how, exactly, I would give it to them, thank you very much and control your children.

So as they're talking to me, I get to do a little exploration of my gradually fatiguing bicep. Muscle groups operate, generally, in opposition to another. Biceps/triceps are a nice, simple example. By actively extending the triceps while the biceps were loaded, shifting my elbows ever so slightly forward in relation to the ribcage, I radically altered the effort of the biceps. I felt my abdominals engage and my weight shifted slightly back, which I compensated for by extending my hamstrings through the heel and lifting the quadriceps a bit. Now, instead of a slouched, isolated effort of a single muscle group--what happens when you lift weights with sloppy form--I was in a position which activated the entire body. No pose is complete without awareness through all meridians, and its effort like this which lets you feel how altering weight through your feet, or relaxing the butt, or bending the knees can change how your upper body bears weight.

Convalescence, right? Of... employment with, yogic principles, and...

It was just one of those moments.

The Juno Effect

2008-05-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

It is possible... that time has tempered my love for the Gilmore Girls. You see, at first I was confused as to what, exactly, I was supposed to do with this secret obsession I possessed, for which the world at large was sure to judge me. I watched the show with a hunger fueled in part by my Catholic addiction to guilt. Like, you know how some people quit cigarettes and take up excessive eating? I quit feeling guilty about my Major Life Choices and compensated by feeling guilty about my leisure activities instead.

But the great shake'n'bake of time disperses breading and spices evenly the more time it has to shake, and then it bakes. As such, I feel like I'm finally in a place to crack this crispy crust and talk about what's right and wrong about this show.

I came into GG knowing nothing whatsoever about what it was all about, besides the fact that Ben's sisters really liked it. I never saw the floral DVD packaging. I never saw the WB's godawful advertisements or show lead-ins or the portraits of Lauren Graham and Alexis Bleidel air-brushed until you can barely distinguish their facial features. Sure, there were other hints. Hair and nails, which are done up like the prom regardless of where the ladies are at, but it took until the last season--when Rory's hair was not only, whatever, super... hair... done, but also bouncy and done up all whickety whack--for me to notice. THEN even I had to step back and say, whaaaaaaat?

In fact, the first time I encountered the public image of GGs as a pjs and ice cream show for shallow, depressed women was during an improv comedy show, through a character played by a deeply unfunny guy in a wig using a stupid "i'm a girl" voice and pretending to be depressed and watch GG all day long in his/her bed and whine about his/her boyfriend, and I was so deeply offended I almost can't enjoy improv comedy at all anymore.

So, maybe that's how the show was sold, but it is miles away from what the show was, which was basically... if you take the movie Juno, make Ellen Page's parent's suck and be filthy rich, and have her run away to have the baby, which she keeps and supports, then fast forward 16 years (let's remember this is a character drama from Hollywood about overcoming hardship, and not a political statement). Actually the only thing to take from the movie Juno is an extremely plucky, funny, protagonist who reveals noble and surprising inner strength as she bears up against pressure of the Pregnant Teenager taboo and tries to follow a moral path. The rest of the series is about how the mother surrounds herself and her daughter with a supportive and eccentric community in which they can both thrive, struggle, and learn, before birthing the young 'un out of the womb of Star's Hollow into the world at large (wait till I find that speech, it will be an extra shiny dialogic gem). Yeah there are boys, yeah there is crying, and yes the show can, occasionally, make you sick with displays of New England old money, whiteness, and privilege, but at the end of the day it's funny. The banter is on par with, say, a House (ok maybe not House) or a Scrubs or Buffy.

And it was different than the usual shit on television.

A Drivel in Three Parts

2008-05-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

I.

I like to go to the movies alone.

Maybe this is too strong a statement. I mean it's on a line by itself and everything so I should definitely dumb it down.

When I call my friends to go see a movie with me and everyone is being dumb, or I don't feel like trying very hard to get people to go someplace with me, I will very contentedly see the movie by myself. I spend $3.00 on a small coke that will lead to an inevitable pee break which will leave me in bad humor, but that's ok because I knew ahead of time it was going to happen, and then I'll try to laugh at myself but still actually, deep down, I'm pretty mad. Because I had to get up to pee in the middle of the movie. There is no one there to beat me at the dumb pre-movie trivia games so usually I get 100% correct all by myself. I watch the people coming in which is fun, and experience the mildest type of paranoia in which I assume everybody that glances my way is wondering what's wrong with that guy, why is he here all by himself but then I remind myself that actually nobody cares, or if they do I probably don't care that they care, and I grow deeply calm. Which is the best way to watch a movie.

II.

I went to see "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" in exactly this manner about a week ago. It was a well-put together, funny, and sweet movie--I mean, Judd Apatow--which is ultimately very forgettable. But you're glad you saw it, you know? Some moments are just really... adorable, like our protagonist in a black unitard smiling at the girl of his future having just performed his struggling pet project, a Dracula Puppet musical which will charm your socks off and make you laugh. Oops, I just told you the ending. The whole movie is just painful, earnest kitsch thrown out there with a "Ba dup, bap, ba dup, dup, BUP! [slide whistle]." One of the thoughts that passes through my head as I drive home is "It's cool to see some regular looking people in the movies!" Then I have to correct myself and be like, wait, regular looking guys in the movies, because those women were cooked to smokin' hot perfection by the magic celluloid flames of hungry Hollywood (I'm pretty sure they haven't used celluloid since, like, the 20s but whatevah). So, I guess that makes the film passively misogynistic.

I think the funniest parts may have been the fake-TV trailer bits. So deadpan, so not funny, and so absolutely and hilariously damning of pretty much every procedural crime drama currently on the air. SKEWERED the dialogue and character tropes, like, would you like a meathead male sidekick kebab with with some lame-comments-on-the-exposition sauce? I know! Isn't the supernatural twist on the detective's abilities marinade DELICIOUS!?!?

III.

I missed the "My So-Called Life" thing in the mid-nineties. I remember seeing it once and thinking "Nice flannel." Anyway, I watched the pilot and, I dunno. Claire Danes is kind of amazing, and there are some one liners that just ZING, and you remember how confusing everything was in high school and how stupid you were. Then I think about how confusing everything is and how stupid I am...

It's definitely different than the average teen-lit drama fest, so I'll watch a few more to decide if I can make it through the whole thing.

... well I don't...

2008-05-07T07:46:00.001-07:00

This is a clip from the documentary "Up" series, more specifically "Seven Up" which is famous I think.

Apparently I have time to kill. But this is just so worth it.

yoGAH!

2008-05-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Learning about your body is awesome. Overcoming the bounds the brain has in place to protect muscles and organs and whatnot is an actual chemical thrill, like taking a sled down the hill that looks vertical, or jumping from the wicked high rock in your friend's backyard when you were a kid. It's exxxtreme! and I think I'm addicted. Remember in Psych 101 when you learned that people perceive an inclined slope to be steeper than it actually is, so that dumb-asses don't hurt themselves? Similarly, we believe our joints and muscles to be limited in range of motion to protect ourselves from injury. But, with guidance and patience, we can open our proprioceptive sense and occupy space in ever-changing ways. And once you start this process, miraculous things occur. I'm not kidding. You can stand comfortably for longer; you don't mind when you have to sit on the floor; you can occupy yourself by expanding the diaphragm and intercostals on long car rides.

Everybody's different, right? Some people feel like they can move substantively and confidently through the world when they've crossed off everything on their todo list. Others get that ass-kicking feeling when they've performed, or gotten laid, or earned lots of money, or contemplated the mysteries of the world, or removed a booger from way back in their nasal cavity. We are what we do, and getting down and dirty with that old time proprioception is one of the things that makes me stand up a little straighter.

I love that yoga is a process, and I love that ideas you discover through working the body can bleed into other parts of your life. I know that sometimes the metaphors in yogic practice sound ridiculous (they really do), but there's an extent to which they make sense to practitioners. "Open your third eye" is a perfect explanation for relaxing the muscles that move the eyes, forehead, and scalp, an area of ENORMOUS tension for us anxious folk, and the concept of prana (universal energy) flow wheeling through chakras facilitates the relaxation and extension of muscle groups--making it easier to isolate and tone others--as well as discovering the center of gravity for arm balances and inversions. And when it hurts, the answer is always to breathe deeper, pull into your center, and calm down. Needless to say, this was a revelation to an Irish Catholic white boy from New England with a family history of medical issues related to inordinately HIGH ANXIETY.

Hoo. I don't want to make this post any longer, so maybe some other time we can get into my personal experiences of physical connectivity and body imagery, like scrubbing the inside of my skull during savasana, or connecting the eyeballs to the pelvic floor, wringing out and flushing the intestines, or...

Things That Are Terrible

2008-05-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

This is slightly off topic, but I have to get these Things that are Terrible off my chest. You know, before the metaphorical immune system protecting my aesthetic sensibilities creates so much bile that my brain swells and/or pops, leaving me helpless in the face of the onslaught of painful procedural dramas (what happens when NCIS goes bad), reality television, and killer tomatoes.

Subjects today: "Underdog" by Spoon and "The Ruins" by Scott Smith.

Underdog - This song sounds like an amalgam of every overplayed classic rock song you've ever heard, and if you're around my age and grew up near a radio you've probably heard a lot of them--tired horn phrase, some hard-strumming guitar, and plaintive, upbeat male vocals singing about gettin' there, workin' hard, and what you have to do to survive. I am not against any of these things, I simply can not be expected to appreciate a song which is characterized by the uninspired re-mashing of said concepts to produce lethargic, repetitious, and grating sound poison. I only wish my neural networks could function faster, in order to send my fingers more speedily to the SEEK dial when I hear the opening tones of this terrible tune.

To it's credit, the lyrics (I listened to them once, while using the song as an exercise in mind-body centering to counter the rage impulse) are censuring small-mindedness and the inability to allow endeavors other than one's own any kind of significance. That is the only thing about this song I can put after the conditional phrase "To it's credit..." I listened to some other Spoon tracks, and my first impression was relative indifference, so maybe the rest of the album could be ok.

The Ruins - My contempt for this piece of printed media is not so strong as the aforelisted item. The writing does not suck, and he does a good job with some character exposition, albeit along grossly stereotyped lines. But, hey. This is a horror novel, aware of its pulpiness (which spares it from full derision) so, ok. But there is no excuse for the gross, really offensive--really, you just have to take my word for it because I could never in good conscience suggest that you read the book to find out for yourself--overuse of the word "implacable" and its many derivates.

The suspense was supsenseful for a while, but 1/3 of the way through the book I was reading every other paragraph of expo. I cannot fathom making it through this book without skimming. When shit started to go down things were appropriately gruesome, but then shit kept going down, implacably, and things remained gruesome. I couldn't wait for all of the characters to die and I only finished because I was on a bus, which was implacably moving forward. Ok, ok, I'll admit to curiosity as to whether or not there would be any survivors (there weren't), and whether or not the villain (an intelligent man-eating vine organism) would be explained (it wasn't). The book was implacable in attaining its haunting ending, implacably implacating the implacableness, implacable.

While I'm on terrible, Prey by Michael Crichton. I don't remember why, but boy, that was bad.

Alright, allow me some time to recover from the hate spitting and we'll get productive next time around.

Dialogic Gem

2008-05-04T17:45:00.000-07:00

Lots of travel and excitement as of late, and I'm exhausted. So here's some dialogue.

Things you need to know, Aaron is freaking out because he's onto the fact that Jaye talks to inanimate objects. Jaye just won employee of the month at her crappy retail job. Sharon is a lesbian and she is totally not out to, well, pretty much anybody.

INT. THE BARREL

TIGHT ON two bubbling fondue pots shaped like barrels. One
is filled with chocolate, one with melted cheese. Jaye, Mom,
Dad, and Sharon sit around the fondue pot. Everyone has a
fondue fork except for Mom, who eats a salad. Jaye’s balloon
bouquet is tied to the back of her chair.

DAD
Where is Aaron? We celebrate all
Tyler victories as a family.

JAYE
I wouldn’t call this a victory.

Sharon scrutinizes Jaye’s Employee Of The Month certificate.

SHARON
This certificate’s invalid.
There’s no signature. Oh, wait.
There’s a stamp.

DAD
A stamp is good enough for me.

MOM
I guarantee you this’ll make the
Christmas letter.

JAYE
Oh, I wish it wouldn’t.

SHARON
There’s Aaron.

They all look to see a very gloomy Aaron approaching.

MOM
Hi, sweetheart!

DAD
Nice you could make it. Did you
see your sister’s certificate?

Aaron takes the certificate, but doesn’t look at it.

AARON
(low, to Jaye, as he sits)
What are you?

JAYE
Huh?

AARON
Are you like Dr. Dolittle?

MOM
Your blood sugar’s low. Here, dip
something.

AARON
It’s not my blood sugar. There’s
something out there and it’s
laughing at us.

SHARON
(re: Jaye)
Did she do this to you?

DAD
You really think your sister’s
special lunch is the appropriate
place for an existential crisis?

AARON

It’s not an existential crisis.

MOM
It’s nothing to be ashamed of,
sweetheart. You’re studying
religion, for godsake. You’re
bound to have one sooner or later.

AARON
Not an existential crisis. Just
the opposite. I was fine when
existence had no meaning.
Meaninglessness in a universe that
has no meaning -- that I get. But
meaninglessness in a universe with
meaning? What does that mean?

JAYE
It doesn’t mean anything.

AARON
Did the cow creamer tell you that?

DAD
What has gotten into you?

MOM
I am throwing that creamer away the
second we get home.

SHARON
The meaninglessness of meaning?
Are you people high?

MOM
Really, though.

JAYE
You want meaningless? This fondue
is meaningless. It mocks everyone
at this table.

DAD
That’s your celebratory fondue.

JAYE
I didn’t earn celebratory fondue.
I don’t deserve to be called
Employee of the Month. I don’t
deserve this certificate. I don’t
deserve a parking space on P-1.

(reconsidering)

But I am taking the afternoon off.

Jaye starts to head off, stops, goes back, grabs her balloons
and leaves. Aaron broods as he dips fondue. Mom and Dad are
flabbergasted. Dad turns to Sharon:

DAD
Anything you’d like to share?

She looks up, a piece of gooey cheese fondue half in her
mouth. She shakes her head --

SHARON
Uh-uh. No.

For the curious, that is from the Wonderfalls episode entitled "Muffin Buffalo." You should see it, the ensemble rapport is freakin fantastic.

Gripe #1: [Ex]igent Circumstances

2008-05-01T03:49:00.000-07:00

Gripes are not fair. Complaining sucks, and there is always a far more sensible choice than offhandedly slinging disappointment and bitterness. Whenever I complain, I feel like I cut too broad a swathe. Unrestrained contempt is, after all, not a fine cutting tool. And didn't your Mom ever tell you nobody likes a whiner? Oh, what's that, you don't have a Mom? Sorry.

Now we're done with disclaimin' and down to complainin'! This is the internet, bitches.

Why does television insist on continuing to drop mysterious exes on the love interests of our protagonists? More importantly, how do the exes have such impeccable timing? Oh, oh so close to the moment of deliverance from weekly tension and frustration, our hero finally admits his or her feelings to his or herself! Or maybe to a friend! They prepare in dramatic fashion to catch up to the spurned love interest, only to find that at that very second in space and time, love interest is sucking face with the ex. I hurl my slipper at the screen to the befuddlement of my viewing partner, real or imagined, pause, and swear I'm done with this series forever for fifteen seconds before I can unpause again.

Maybe the problem is endemic to serial fiction. Dickens sometimes used the format as a kind of character history strip-tease ("It was the money left me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers"), but TV, unfortunately, doesn't have the luxury of letting characters work through their shit psychologically. Well, I guess they could, but it's TV. Why not just put the issue on the screen for us to see, right? And it's just so damned... logical. Structurally and whatnot. One of the best episodes of Wonderfalls is the one after Heidi comes back; Grey's Anatomy got a whole season (and a shitty spin-off show) out of Addison dropping by; can't think of any others off the top of my head but the inappropriate use of semi-colons excites me; OH, what's that another semi-colon.

Gems of Dialogue

2008-04-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

For your pleasure, I offer up the following gem of dialogue from Samurai Jack: the meanest, prettiest, sword-swingin-est cartoon I've ever fed my hungry little eyes.

Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness, tears open a portal in time and sends our man Jack into the future. "Where my evil is law!" -Aku

Jack, naturally, is immediately clobbered by a flying car. This is the future, right? He falls and is clobbered by more flying cars until one police-enforcement lookin' vehicle begins to fire at Jack. In a heart-pounding action sequence, the samurai regains his footing, leaps onto the police vehicle, and severs its front end, proceeding to jump down flying cars to the ground as if they were hop-scotch squares. In the junk-alleys of the terrestrial level of the future, a gigantic, spike-wheeled trash compacter threatens to overtake Jack. Nimbly, he climbs its wheels and arrives safely by the streetside. Three curious creatures await him--one in red tones, a squat blue one with a round head, and a gangly green guy with, for lack of better explanation, a bubbling lava lamp for a head.

Beat, as they stare at him. Begin today's Gem of Dialogue:

[wild cheering and gesticulation, "That was bad, man!"]

Red: Yo, Jack! That was some AWEsome shown!

Blue: I ain't never feel the punk moves like that, Jack.

Green: Jack was all ricocheticky jumpadelic!

Red: A hiz-eck yeah, prodigiously acrobotastic.

Blue: Word, word, but then like, when Jack pulled that swizz-ord and was all like, SWING, SWACK, SWOOP, man, right through the car! Swick-attack-whack and spoil out the back, Jaaaaaaack!

Green: Aw yeah, yeah, and it was all shviiiiiiiiiing, PLOOM! Man, ain't that flunky crunker?

Red: Yo then my man just like lands all coolish style, like, "No sweatin' Joe!"

Green: B-b-b-but then that gunna-runna ramalama-lama, and that trashin' all munchin' and crunchin' and snack mixin'

Blue: Under that fat superfragicalilistic tistic tire, yo.

Red: Yeah but Jack's just like, "Word! Let me get some tire," grab, ZOOOP, "I'm out, Joe."

[Talking over each other]

Jack: Thank you. Where am I?

And that just about sums it up, folks. More Jack to come in the future. In the meantime, check out these words of wisdom from Beloved Yoga Teacher:

"The sides of the body aren't identical twins. They're much more like a brother and sister."

Truism, yo.

Wonderfalls

2008-04-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

As a sucker for novelty, I'm gonna have to start with the series I'm currently in the middle of. Wonderfalls was co-created by Brian Fuller (and some other peeps, but his is the name that seems to stick to all of these shows), the guy who continued on to bring us Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies. Interestingly enough, executively produced by Tim Minear, who I buh-leeve is one of the Heroes guys (shudder). In total they produced 14 episodes, but only aired 4 before getting the axe which, dammit, is a shame. I guess understandable. This show doesn't have quite the perfectly buffed veneer that characterizes the studio display room. You know--at times it trots instead of gallops, risks inconsistency by stylizing episodes along different genre lines, and frequently relies on humor of the absurd. All quirks I adore, and which represent a huge potential in the medium, but the science of network television says delivering the same, not-too-challenging fare week in and week out is the money shot. Thank god for HBO, amiright or amiright?

Jaye is a wicked cool and disaffected 20-something living in a trailer and working retail at a tourist spot in Niagara Falls when inanimate critters start to speak to her, giving her instructions which inevitably lead to the warming of hearts and further knowledge of the self. And wait a second, what is with the unisex names for female protagonists in all these Fuller shows? Jaye, George (with sister Reggie), and Chuck. End aside.

Me, I got hooked when a chicken on the back of a hairpiece spoke to Jaye and said "Destroy Gretchen Hall" (or whatever her name was, sorry I'm not much of a detail guy). I'm by myself in my basement laughing tears into my eyes and smacking my thighs. I really slapped my thighs, I'm not kidding. Yeah the line loses its potency out of context (up until this point, the stuffed animals and whatnot have been giving kind, gentle, and somewhat obtuse advice) but this shit just tickles me. And the show is full of scenes that just pop with humor of the absurd. Lines like "I had some time to organize my thoughts while you were in a coma, and I have a business proposition for you" take these busted situations in stride and just roll with 'em. Or a kind nun in a crisis of faith wielding a knife over poor Jaye to cut the demons from her... it can get as weird as you want, but in the end is calmly incorporated into familiar character dramas. And it's all cool, because the unexplained talking objects have accounted for all twists of fate and freak occurrences.

Maybe my spot is soft because I, similarly to Jaye, am a happy-go-lucky need nothin' but a roof and three meals although at times societal pressures make me insecure about my position in life kind of person. But this show is totally strange and worthwhile, and I love that I can get my goopy shmaltz without having to feel bad about it because it's relentlessly peppered with shocks of absurdity.

Howdy

2008-04-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Let us begin simply. I am creating ~~yet another~~ this blog to glorify Gilmore Girls, one of the most surprising, lovely, and heartwarming byproducts to ever drain from the sewage tube of network television.

MULLIGAN! MULLIGAN!

... Ahem. I would like to announce the opening of my most recent blogging effort, through which I hope to make everyone love yoga and Lorelai Gilmore as much as I do.

Shit.

What I mean, is... I watch a lot of television. Not TV teevee, DVDs of televised serialized fiction. I also do lots of yoga. Now, there is a high likelihood I will never:

a) become a guru
b) write for television, or
c) do something useful like raise eggplants

and AS SUCH, I feel like the agency granted me by the miracle that is LIFE would be going to waste if I didn't make something of what I think about all day. Drivel. I'll be making drivel, which I would like you to imagine is the DELICIOUS ice cream topping it sounds like it should be.

I blame my penchant for the TV series on Charles Dickens and my ex-girlfriend who made me watch Sex and the City with her. Charles Dickens actually has nothing to do with it besides the fact he wrote his novels in INSTALLMENTS (which made a really strong impression on me in middle school), and the other thing to note is that, maybe two or three episodes into SatC, I was sitting the girlie down and bugging her to watch it with me. So at the end of the day I guess there is nothing to blame my obsession on but my animal nature. Grrrrrr.

But seriously, think about it, and what is there not to love? Once you've cracked that eggshell, you can get from zero to yolky empathy in NO TIME FLAT. The teaser is rolling, and you're already all "Holy shit McNulty is a fucking psycho," or "Will that goofball Chuck ever get it together?" Instant dramatic tension. Sometimes in a series, you have to wait sixty hours for the real character payoff. I get that some people don't have the patience, but if you can hold out long enough, man, that shit gets tantrically delightful. You can watch as much or as little as you want. You can watch while you stretch. You can watch while you iron. You can watch while you daydream of watching the rest, and some of 'em just keep going and going and going...

I'm not quite sure how the yoga fits in yet. Yoga gets ingrained in life at a pretty deep level when you spend some serious time with it (just like everything else) but the theory and whatnot behind it presumes a lot more than just that. And it's all about the body, and man you could spend your entire LIFE trying to figure that shit out and never get past the hip joints. Maybe it will just be an addendum at the end of posts. Time will tell, only time will tell.

So tune in soon. I expect I'll be tackling either Gilmore Girls, Battlestar Galactica, or Dead Like Me first. And yeah, yeah, yeah... I loved The Wire.