The Next Thing

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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:

1. 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.
   
2. The muscles of the legs are toned, making everything better.
   
3. With proper posture, the spine is lengthened and shoulders opened, allowing greater ease of breath and increased lung capacity.
   
4. The bicycle is by and large a silent vehicle, making it suitable for investigative stalking trips, assassination trips, or other general ninja use.
5. 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:

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

CONCLUSIONS: Reiterate thesis.

yes! headstands!

blunt trauma to the haunch

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.