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.

The Return of Television

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

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

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

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?

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

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.