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Tuesday, February 18, 2003
I went to visit some friends last night after work. When I returned home I spent the remainder of the evening in the manner to which I have become accustomed: sitting in my study before a roaring fire, sipping sherry and paging through the collected works of T.S. Eliot. "Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball, To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead...'"
OK, that's a complete lie. I desperately wish it were true. What I really did when I got home last night was blow off my one million chores and sit slack-jawed in front of the TV watching the 2-hour finale of "Joe Millionaire". I am a bad, bad person.
Luckily I'm a bad person with a Tivo, so I was able to skip over the excruciating first hour of the show in which they recapped the entire season. I am so glad I didn't watch the other episodes. It was painful enough in summary form at 20x fast forward; I can't imagine what it would have been like to watch it every week.
I have to admit that I was in it for the spectacle. I wanted to see what would happen when these women let Evan (the Joe Millionaire of the title) have it for lying to them the whole time. I was therefore extremely disappointed with what actually transpired, which was nothing.
I don't know what I was expecting, exactly - screaming, cursing, flying Ming vases, perhaps? - but I did not get it. I suppose what I wanted, in the words of Mr. Eliot, was to see Evan "pinned and wriggling on the wall", but he hardly even suffered. The women just kind of looked at him dumbly and didn't say anything. The secret twist ending also turned out to be highly predictable, although in fairness they would have needed knife-fighting monkeys to win me back after such a boring spectacle.
I think there were two problems. One is that the people on this show were far too aware of the fact that they were on television. After Evan dropped the bombshell and left the room, the editors showed close ups of the women sitting alone on their velvet couches, pondering. I suppose you could interpret their reactions as stunned silence, but what I saw on their faces was the supreme effort of trying to stay composed on national TV. Even Evan's "breakdown", in which he secretly met with one of the producers on camera to express his inner turmoil over the lie, felt staged.
The second problem is that, well, who cares? In the cluttered post-Survivor reality TV landscape, does anybody really have any opinion of these people? Does anyone love them, or even hate them? I certainly don't, and that made it hard for the show to have any impact. (OK, so I didn't actually watch the other episodes, but I can't imagine my reaction would have been any different, aside from the extreme anger I would have felt at wasting so much of my time.)
And let's be frank for a moment: Evan, for all his rugged good looks, is a major doofus. He is such a doofus, in fact, that he gives the women and all the rest of the proceedings a greasy patina of doofusness that makes you wonder what the point is. You know they're not going to want to stay with this guy, and they know it, too. When Evan gave Zora the ring at the end, he didn't use the words "marriage" or "engagement" or even "relationship". He mumbled something vague about a promise to pursue "this" after the show was over, and she said something about "continuing the journey". That, folks, is the kiss of death.
This experience has made it abundantly clear to me that a team of good writers and actors on a scripted show can make me care far more about a character than a "real person" on a reality show. I only hope that the rest of America makes the same realization soon so that we can rid ourselves of reality TV once and for all.
Just as long as it happens after next Monday's broadcast of "Joe Millionaire: The Aftermath".
OK, that's a complete lie. I desperately wish it were true. What I really did when I got home last night was blow off my one million chores and sit slack-jawed in front of the TV watching the 2-hour finale of "Joe Millionaire". I am a bad, bad person.
Luckily I'm a bad person with a Tivo, so I was able to skip over the excruciating first hour of the show in which they recapped the entire season. I am so glad I didn't watch the other episodes. It was painful enough in summary form at 20x fast forward; I can't imagine what it would have been like to watch it every week.
I have to admit that I was in it for the spectacle. I wanted to see what would happen when these women let Evan (the Joe Millionaire of the title) have it for lying to them the whole time. I was therefore extremely disappointed with what actually transpired, which was nothing.
I don't know what I was expecting, exactly - screaming, cursing, flying Ming vases, perhaps? - but I did not get it. I suppose what I wanted, in the words of Mr. Eliot, was to see Evan "pinned and wriggling on the wall", but he hardly even suffered. The women just kind of looked at him dumbly and didn't say anything. The secret twist ending also turned out to be highly predictable, although in fairness they would have needed knife-fighting monkeys to win me back after such a boring spectacle.
I think there were two problems. One is that the people on this show were far too aware of the fact that they were on television. After Evan dropped the bombshell and left the room, the editors showed close ups of the women sitting alone on their velvet couches, pondering. I suppose you could interpret their reactions as stunned silence, but what I saw on their faces was the supreme effort of trying to stay composed on national TV. Even Evan's "breakdown", in which he secretly met with one of the producers on camera to express his inner turmoil over the lie, felt staged.
The second problem is that, well, who cares? In the cluttered post-Survivor reality TV landscape, does anybody really have any opinion of these people? Does anyone love them, or even hate them? I certainly don't, and that made it hard for the show to have any impact. (OK, so I didn't actually watch the other episodes, but I can't imagine my reaction would have been any different, aside from the extreme anger I would have felt at wasting so much of my time.)
And let's be frank for a moment: Evan, for all his rugged good looks, is a major doofus. He is such a doofus, in fact, that he gives the women and all the rest of the proceedings a greasy patina of doofusness that makes you wonder what the point is. You know they're not going to want to stay with this guy, and they know it, too. When Evan gave Zora the ring at the end, he didn't use the words "marriage" or "engagement" or even "relationship". He mumbled something vague about a promise to pursue "this" after the show was over, and she said something about "continuing the journey". That, folks, is the kiss of death.
This experience has made it abundantly clear to me that a team of good writers and actors on a scripted show can make me care far more about a character than a "real person" on a reality show. I only hope that the rest of America makes the same realization soon so that we can rid ourselves of reality TV once and for all.
Just as long as it happens after next Monday's broadcast of "Joe Millionaire: The Aftermath".
Sunday, February 16, 2003
I read with great interest Sundry's entry containing one hundred things about her. Like the mindless follower that I am, I immediately thought this would be a great idea - until I started trying to actually think of things to write. This exercise reinforced my conviction that I'm a just big boring dweeb. Unlike Sundry, I have no tattoos, no piercings, and I never lived in Chile. Hell, she's kissed almost as many women as I have. OK, that's not true at all, but it sounds good. Actually, no it doesn't. It makes me sound like a big loser. Never mind.
As if to confirm my boringness, my runner-up idea for this entry is to give you a run down of my lengthy weekend to-do list. I had a ton of chores to do this weekend, so I dedicated the majority of my waking hours to getting them accomplished. Let's take a stroll through the never-ending rock concert that is my life, shall we?
1) Pick Stockstock footage.
Part of my job as a producer of the Stockstock Film Festival is to help pick the footage that entrants will use to make their films. Thus, I spent upwards of 15 hours this weekend downloading and watching old 50's films on my computer until my eyes were blurry. You know the kind of films I mean - the ones with acres of flat-topped white teenagers and announcers that say "roe-bit" instead of "robot" (like Zoidberg on "Futurama"). Here's an example in case you're interested. This may seem like a fairly obvious thing to say, but man movies were slow back then. You haven't lived until you've slogged your way through a 15-minute film about aluminum.
Anyway, I'm almost finished choosing my footage, which I'm very happy about. That's one major task out of the way.
2) Work on the Stockstock web site.
I did some work on this, but not much. I'd like to tell you that I couldn't stand the thought of sitting in front of a computer on such a glorious weekend and therefore abandoned this task in favor of hiking in the woods and communing with nature, but that's just not true (although that would have been fun). In reality there was a server outage, so I decided to work on selecting my footage instead. I can already tell that next weekend is going to be full of coding and other various bits of web sitery.
3) Read the book for Book Club.
My book club is reading José Saramago's All The Names this month. Our meeting is next weekend, and as of Friday I'd barely started the book. I like it, but I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to sit down with the book and get into it. I read a lot this weekend, and now I'm more than half done. I shouldn't have any trouble finishing on time.
4) See Far From Heaven.
I've been meaning to see this movie for weeks, and I finally did. It immediately shot to the top of my still non-existent Top Ten Movies of 2002 list. (It's coming, I swear.) The script is artful, truthful, and complicated, the production design and super-saturated Technicolor-style photography are wonderful to look at, and the acting is superb. Julianne Moore is absolutely captivating. Note to Stephen Daldry: this is how you direct great actresses on film. Moore's performance is subtle and powerful, her emotions simmering just below the surface for much of the movie. Throughout the film I kept thinking to myself, "This is what The Hours should have been." I urge you all to go out and see this movie. It's already been largely snubbed by the Academy - a nomination for Julianne Moore and a token nomination for Best Screenplay - but in my opinion Far From Heaven is clearly the best picture of 2002.
5) Go grocery shopping.
It's interesting to see who goes grocery shopping on a Sunday evening. Tonight it was: single males buying frozen dinners and things in cans (i.e., me), old people clutching sheafs of coupons, parents accompanied by exactly one child, and two slightly white-trashy young women talking in hip hop ghetto slang and buying lots of wine, one of them wearing amazingly tight jeans and the other wearing pajamas.
Although I rarely go to the grocery store, I have to admit that I secretly kind of enjoy it. This is mainly because, as an adult, I can buy whatever the hell I want. One of the benefits of not growing up mentally is the constant delight you experience when your child-like expectations are met with the awesome power of adulthood. I remember very clearly going to the store as a kid and hearing my mom's response when we would pester her for stuff: "When you're paying for the groceries, you can get whatever you want." Now when I go to the store the same scene plays out in my head, but this time everything goes my way.
"Can I get this? It's called 'Rock Star Energy Drink' and it comes in this cool black can and I bet it's really good and I really want it can I get it can I please can I?"
There is a pregnant pause while the Mom-in-my-head considers the request.
"Sure, toss it in the cart! Get whatever you want! You're the grown up, so you can do whatever you damn well please!"
Woo hoo! In it goes! The world is my oyster!
Tonight's purchases included the aforementioned Rock Star Energy Drink ("Enhanced with the potent liver-cleansing herb Milk Thistle!"), Häagen Dazs Cookie Dough Chip ice cream, two cans of mandarin orange slices (it's the fruit that tastes like candy!), that Franco-American canned spaghetti that has to be terrible for me based purely on how much I like it, and a box of Frosted Flakes that might not last until tomorrow morning. I also got healthy food like apples and corn and granola and stuff, but you probably don't care about that.
6) Clean out den.
*cough cough* This item has been on my to-do list since late October, so it should come as a surprise to no one that I didn't get around to it this weekend. Do not underestimate my ability to put things off. I have home repair projects that have been in the queue for almost 9 months - this is why I still don't have a door on my laundry room. (Remind me to tell you that story sometime.) The den will soon be so full of boxes and assorted crap that it will be easier to simply wall off the room completely and pretend it never existed. "Den? What den?" Maybe that's what I'll do; it might save me some time.
So that was my list of chores for the weekend. Next weekend's list will once again include the Stockstock web site and the omni-present den cleaning. Can you stand the suspense? Will I get the site finished in time? Will I even set foot in the den, much less clean it? Will I buy another box of Frosted Flakes and eat it in one sitting? Tune in next week and find out!
As if to confirm my boringness, my runner-up idea for this entry is to give you a run down of my lengthy weekend to-do list. I had a ton of chores to do this weekend, so I dedicated the majority of my waking hours to getting them accomplished. Let's take a stroll through the never-ending rock concert that is my life, shall we?
1) Pick Stockstock footage.
Part of my job as a producer of the Stockstock Film Festival is to help pick the footage that entrants will use to make their films. Thus, I spent upwards of 15 hours this weekend downloading and watching old 50's films on my computer until my eyes were blurry. You know the kind of films I mean - the ones with acres of flat-topped white teenagers and announcers that say "roe-bit" instead of "robot" (like Zoidberg on "Futurama"). Here's an example in case you're interested. This may seem like a fairly obvious thing to say, but man movies were slow back then. You haven't lived until you've slogged your way through a 15-minute film about aluminum.
Anyway, I'm almost finished choosing my footage, which I'm very happy about. That's one major task out of the way.
2) Work on the Stockstock web site.
I did some work on this, but not much. I'd like to tell you that I couldn't stand the thought of sitting in front of a computer on such a glorious weekend and therefore abandoned this task in favor of hiking in the woods and communing with nature, but that's just not true (although that would have been fun). In reality there was a server outage, so I decided to work on selecting my footage instead. I can already tell that next weekend is going to be full of coding and other various bits of web sitery.
3) Read the book for Book Club.
My book club is reading José Saramago's All The Names this month. Our meeting is next weekend, and as of Friday I'd barely started the book. I like it, but I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to sit down with the book and get into it. I read a lot this weekend, and now I'm more than half done. I shouldn't have any trouble finishing on time.
4) See Far From Heaven.
I've been meaning to see this movie for weeks, and I finally did. It immediately shot to the top of my still non-existent Top Ten Movies of 2002 list. (It's coming, I swear.) The script is artful, truthful, and complicated, the production design and super-saturated Technicolor-style photography are wonderful to look at, and the acting is superb. Julianne Moore is absolutely captivating. Note to Stephen Daldry: this is how you direct great actresses on film. Moore's performance is subtle and powerful, her emotions simmering just below the surface for much of the movie. Throughout the film I kept thinking to myself, "This is what The Hours should have been." I urge you all to go out and see this movie. It's already been largely snubbed by the Academy - a nomination for Julianne Moore and a token nomination for Best Screenplay - but in my opinion Far From Heaven is clearly the best picture of 2002.
5) Go grocery shopping.
It's interesting to see who goes grocery shopping on a Sunday evening. Tonight it was: single males buying frozen dinners and things in cans (i.e., me), old people clutching sheafs of coupons, parents accompanied by exactly one child, and two slightly white-trashy young women talking in hip hop ghetto slang and buying lots of wine, one of them wearing amazingly tight jeans and the other wearing pajamas.
Although I rarely go to the grocery store, I have to admit that I secretly kind of enjoy it. This is mainly because, as an adult, I can buy whatever the hell I want. One of the benefits of not growing up mentally is the constant delight you experience when your child-like expectations are met with the awesome power of adulthood. I remember very clearly going to the store as a kid and hearing my mom's response when we would pester her for stuff: "When you're paying for the groceries, you can get whatever you want." Now when I go to the store the same scene plays out in my head, but this time everything goes my way.
"Can I get this? It's called 'Rock Star Energy Drink' and it comes in this cool black can and I bet it's really good and I really want it can I get it can I please can I?"
There is a pregnant pause while the Mom-in-my-head considers the request.
"Sure, toss it in the cart! Get whatever you want! You're the grown up, so you can do whatever you damn well please!"
Woo hoo! In it goes! The world is my oyster!
Tonight's purchases included the aforementioned Rock Star Energy Drink ("Enhanced with the potent liver-cleansing herb Milk Thistle!"), Häagen Dazs Cookie Dough Chip ice cream, two cans of mandarin orange slices (it's the fruit that tastes like candy!), that Franco-American canned spaghetti that has to be terrible for me based purely on how much I like it, and a box of Frosted Flakes that might not last until tomorrow morning. I also got healthy food like apples and corn and granola and stuff, but you probably don't care about that.
6) Clean out den.
*cough cough* This item has been on my to-do list since late October, so it should come as a surprise to no one that I didn't get around to it this weekend. Do not underestimate my ability to put things off. I have home repair projects that have been in the queue for almost 9 months - this is why I still don't have a door on my laundry room. (Remind me to tell you that story sometime.) The den will soon be so full of boxes and assorted crap that it will be easier to simply wall off the room completely and pretend it never existed. "Den? What den?" Maybe that's what I'll do; it might save me some time.
So that was my list of chores for the weekend. Next weekend's list will once again include the Stockstock web site and the omni-present den cleaning. Can you stand the suspense? Will I get the site finished in time? Will I even set foot in the den, much less clean it? Will I buy another box of Frosted Flakes and eat it in one sitting? Tune in next week and find out!