TV Slut Update

Saw 30 Rock - didn't enjoy it as much as Studio 60 - whose wit is a tad more biting and much more subtle. Which is odd. 30 Rock should be making me laugh that is it's goal in life. Studio 60? Doesn't have to, it's a drama. To be honest? I didn't laugh once during 30 Rock. May have sniggered a few times at Alec Baldwin - whose dead-pan line delivery made me smile. The others? Trying too hard. Watching it reminded me of watching Saturday Night Live.

Twenty Odd Years - (I think that's what it is called), on the other hand, surprised me. The critics were panning this show and from the previews I thought it would be silly or stale. But it's not. It's actually a Funny show. With some brilliant and very realistic one-liners. Plus Tambor and Lithgow know how to deliver them. Whoever is writing Twenty has my admiration. First sitcom since the Office that I've laughed at in a while.

Course as you know, I find sardonic or sarcastic wit funny. That off-hand line, which you have to think about.

Lost is a show that is in desperate need of some humor. Right quick. Damn thing has gotten too frigging serious for its own good. I think the first season worked better, because even if we were focused on Jack/Sawyer/Kate - we always had Hurly for comic relief. Been missing Hurly. And yes I know he's in next week's episode, which as luck would have it is the one I'm missing due to a prior social engagement. Haven't been to a celiac dinner in a while - need to remedy it. Plus, I can always catch the replay on ABC.com. If you're loving LOST, don't get too attached, it's going on Hiatus in December or sometime in November. We get 6 episodes. Then a huge break and all the rest. They are showing this baby in two parts, much like BSG was shown on Sci-Fi last year. Reason is - they discovered that breaking it up last year and scattering episodes in Dec and Jan and Feb hurt them. So they figure they'll keep their audience - if they do it in two shots, no breaks in between.
What's airing in it's place during the end of November, December, January and Feb? Ah...the new Tay Diggs drama that we got a preview of tonight.

Great plan. Except I don't think that's why Lost went down in ratings last year or why it is in danger of losing its audience. People are fickle and have short attention spans. They don't like being frustrated, preached to, or bored. They get that at work. They want to relax and be entertained and told they are bright and clever. They also do not want to see how nasty their favorite characters can be - yes, I know, people watch reality shows - but that's different. And yep, we can blame reality shows for the sudden onslaught of gnarly anti-heroes on TV. Hey if you are willing to watch "real" people snipe and be nasty to each other - what about actors playing roles.
Same difference? Right?

Only one problem...if the audience does not care about your makebelieve characters they will stop watching. Emotional investment. Very important.


( spoilers Lost )

Also watched the Nine and Project Runway - don't have much to say about either. Except that the whole scandal thing in Runway feels very contrived and somewhat annoying. Nine is interesting in how it is examining how people handle post-traumatic stress in a variety of ways.

On Writing...or rather my insecurities regarding it

I remember a conversation I had many years ago with a drawing professor in college, who told me that most of the talented artists she'd known rarely had their work displayed in galleries or museums and remained unknown. While flash-in-the-pan commericial artists's work hung on walls, much like the gallery we were visiting on that particular field trip - one of many. She was unimpressed with the work, which I realize now was forgettable and tended to be on the "trendy" or "shock" side of the fence as opposed to being something that spoke to one's soul. Much like Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" or for that matter, Mitch Albom's "Tuesday's With Morrie" or Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code." Commericial successes, entertaining, but forgettable.

The reason for this, she stated, is the good artists simply do not know how to market themselves. They cannot figure out how to charm the gallery owner or obtain the interest of the museum rep. They are artists not salesmen or marketers and it takes a salesman to sell art. At the time, I thought she was being a tad defensive, I still think that to a degree, but I also agree with her - having seen my fair share of gallery exhibits.

This memory, over eighteen years old now, comes to me tonight while reading Marcel Proust's By Way of Swann's or more popularly known, Swann's Way - where Proust, although we are divided by more than a century, pinpoints a fear or if you will an insecurity that has been plaguing me for quite some time. A fear, I think, that plagues all true writers. Not the ones who mutter about how they'd write if it weren't for the kids, the job, or their social lives getting in the way. Not the ones who dream of being the next Stephen King or wrote stories as a young adult but grew out of it to pursue more fruitful work. But the one's who write no matter what, regardless of whether they are being paid or applauded for their output, often in spite of the fact they aren't and half fearing/half yearning for a day that they will be. Finding a minute or an hour each week or each month to scratch something down. Who are constantly writing, twisting and struggling with words, like a potter struggles to sculpt clay and curses each splattered ruin, but keeps placing it on the wheel, or a jeweler screams at the wrong bend of wire or the smashed bead, but threads the bead on the wire again, or the knitter curses that skipped loop. And we are never ever quite satisfied with them. Always thinking somehow someway the final product could be better. Half fearing to send it out to a reader, but unable not to, for every true writer yearns to be read and to be immortalized by their words. To know their words pierced some stranger's brain, and for a moment communicated a thought that spans more than one dimension.

In the following passage - Proust puts in far better words than I can convey what I've been feeling regarding my own writing the last few months and in most particular today. A feeling that made me consider, in a fit of self-disgust and artistic self-loathing, to delete everything I've posted online that I could possibly find. Removing the horror from thine eyes. It passed, before I did it. As it often does. But the shadow, the echo of the feeling remains ghostlike and hovering in the air.
( Passage from Proust )