Stare At The TV Screen. I Don't Know What To Do.

So, a few years ago I worked on this pilot. It could have been funny, but it was doomed. DOOMED, I says! Watch the hideous thing or don't. Either way, it will continue to exist. It was shot with a SONY Handicam and a Canon ZR10 with almost no sound equipment or money. Never got paid for it, either.

Part One!


Part Two!


Part Three!


Part Four!

No Telling How This Came To Be. You Ended Up Here When You Didn't Agree.

[I have video and stories from Japan, which will be posted soon, but I wanted to talk about TV first. Check back later for cool Tokyo stuff]

NBC blew my socks off last year. Seriously, there wasn't another network that even came close to the success they found with their new and returning shows. Heroes, The Office, 30 Rock, and Friday Night Lights just hit me in the face and reminded me how amazing television can be.

I watched them all on my computer and iPod because I don't have cable, a dependable VCR, a DVR machine or the inclination to be sitting front of my TV, hoping for decent reception, every week at the same time. Sure, that sounds petty, but it isn't like I'm tuning in for the cure for cancer or the key to transcendental awakening. It's great entertainment, but it's just storytelling. However, I happily paid my $1.99 per episode to make it convenient to enjoy that entertaining storytelling. Really, I just enjoyed taking 22 minute lunch breaks so I could watch the latest 30 Rock each Friday. It was convenient, easy and dependable.

I guess it just wasn't enough for Vivendi.

They're ending their agreement with Apple to sell new programs on iTunes, which sucks. The relationship went flying off the rails for the same three reasons that most relationships do: money, control, and ego. Vivendi wants to raise the rates above the standard $1.99 per episode, Apple wants to keep the price low to make video iPods more appealing, and neither wants to cave to the other's demands.

The end result is that NBC won't be putting up the new seasons of Heroes, 30 Rock or The Office, or new shows like Bionic Woman. Instead they'll be selling them through Amazon's Unbox program (which is incompatible with Apple's operating system) for $1.99 per episode. So, I won't be downloading them this year. For now Heroes is available for streaming on NBC.com (with commercials and some glitches), but for some reason The Office does not seem to be. I have to wonder at the logic behind these decisions (if there in fact is any) and why Vivendi seems to have such little regard for the consumers they have found through iTunes.

The whole fuss reminds me, though, that my life was just fine without Heroes, 30 Rock, The Office, Friday Night Lights or any other NBC/Universal program. They're great entertainment, great storytelling, but they aren't going to cure cancer or help in my spiritual awakening.

So, goodbye NBC.

Maybe I'll check out the DVDs next year. In the meantime, I'll just have to find someone else to eat my lunch with.

And I Swear There's Something Evil In The TV

Anyone who has talked to me in the past six months probably knows just how much I like the show Heroes. It's awesome. Watch it. Watch it and then talk to me about it. Seriously.

I love that show for many reasons, not the least of which is Sylar. He has got to be one of the creepiest, most engrossing villains I've ever seen in literature. That's right, I just called a network television series "literature." Deal with it. It's got me thinking about villains, monsters, and antagonists in general. They're a key part to any story. Without villains and their evil machinations, a story is just a series of occurrences. Boring.

When I was in fourth grade we put on a play based on the story of Pecos Bill. There was something wrong with the script, and even I could tell. It took a while to figure out what it was, but eventually I realized that there was no villain. There was no Shere Khan, no Captain Hook, no big ass shark. We had a tornado for a villain. Boring.

I've tried to inject a little antagonism into my comedy. I really can't believe that it took me this long to see the importance of challenging an audience. I'm not there make friends, after all.

Anyway, blah blah blah. I've got a show on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Blah blah blah. Oh, also, I've got a video in the Tenth Annual Open Film And Video Screening at the IAO this Friday. Seven o'clock, five dollars, eighth and Broadway in downtown Oklahoma City. Good times.

Until then, feast your eyes on one of my greatest award-not-winning performances ever. Watch it. [Late Edit: Yes, Laura, there was no audio. Thanks for letting me know. I've reposted the performance, with audio, and with a clip of me giving a short, shitty interview at the end. "Enjoy."]

Twenty-Twenty-Twenty Four Hours To Go. I Wanna Be Sedated.

It's times like these that I'm ashamed to have strident, unwavering and extremist political views. Because it is people like me that, from time to time, do their damnedest to ruin something fun for everyone else. This time, the target is television's "24."

The charges include collusion in PNAC's wet dreams and unfairly depicting Muslims as terrorists. I wonder if these people have ever watched the show.

TwentyFour is a hyperbole. Yes, threats to America are more dramatic on television than they are in the real world, and yes, jihadi salafist martyrs make pretty good boogyemen for American television viewers. That doesn't make make the show a neo-con Chick Tract. It is easy, though, to focus on a couple of hot-button ideas like evil brown men and dirty bombs, but that simplistic view ignores a great deal about the whole. For one, the show takes a dim view of preemptive military adventures. It takes an even dimmer view of large oil companies and Presidents who lie to the American people and claim extra-Constitutional powers. And just so we're clear, racism and religious intolerance are cast in a poor light as well. But to get to all that, you've got to actually watch the episodes, perhaps even an entire season, before making a judgment.

And let me be clear, I'm not saying that people shouldn't take entertainment seriously. After all, I'm writing my thesis on biker films, so it would be a bit hypocritical of me to say "meh, it doesn't matter." Television does matter. It reaches almost as many Americans as water, and what it says says a lot about the culture that makes and consumes it. Of course, what we read into our entertainment, and how we read it, says a lot about us as well. If we're going to examine ourselves, let's do it right, otherwise it's just trainspotting. Oh, and I wrote a couple of papers about TwentyFour a while back. Feel free to take a look:
British Culture and spooks
Family, Fear, Paranoia and Revenge in 21st Century America: A Cultural Analysis of 24