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shadowkat1. Work week from hell is over. And the saga of the company who can't decide whether or not to go out of business continues. You think your life sucks? Just think, you could be diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, be served not one but three lawsuits, one of which is from the IRS because without your knowledge your ex-bookkeeper fixed the books, so you now owe the IRS two years worth of back taxes. Add to this nightmare, your recently laid-off employees have decided to inform your current clients that you are going out of business when in reality - you aren't, well not at the moment at any rate. [Note this is not my company that we are talking about. I work for a state funded transportation agency, we don't go out of business. If we did, millions of people would be stranded and pollution would eat up the globe. That's one of the pluses of working for a government agency - job security. Granted you don't get any raises and you're overworked and killed by bureaucratic red tape. But at least you don't have to worry about getting laid off or moved to Timbuktu...not that being moved to Timbuktu would necessarily be a bad thing.]
Whenever I'd whine to my Granny back in the 1990s, she'd invariably relate a sad tale about
one of our many relatives. Whose lives resembled the heroine of the flick Winter's Bone. They even lived in the same area.
Whinging doesn't go over well in my family. We bop each other on the head.
2. Fake spider is permanently gone. Very happy about this. No idea why. But I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
3. On the TV show front...have realized there's really only a handful of shows that I care about watching or would miss. If they disappeared, it would be okay. No fretting or pounding of the breast, no campaigns to save them. Not that I ever did this in regards to TV series or films or books for that matter. I'm not a good fan. I don't organize campaigns to save tv shows. I figure if the network wants to cancel them, that's life.
Something else will pop up to capture my interest eventually. Granted, it would be nice if the network let the writers know ahead of time - so they could give the series a decent ending. But 9 times out of 10 even if the series got its full run - it wouldn't get a decent ending. How many tv series have you seen that had satisfying endings? Maybe 2 or 3?
So it begs the question why bother wasting time to campaign for it to continue? Naive optimism?
Should be noted that I'm a fan of weird tv series and have seen more cancelled before their time tv shows than I want to think about.
TV shows with satisfying endings - I can't really think of any that had a "satisfying" ending. Can you?
TV series that I'd buy on DVD assuming I had the money and space...
* Once Upon A Time S1-2
* The Wire S1-5
* Breaking Bad S1-4
* Game of Thrones S2
* The Good Wife S1-4
* Doctor Who S3-5 and S7
* Torchwood
4. Making my way through Carrie Fisher's Shockaholic, which is rather interesting, in some respects more so than Wishful Drinking. She shines a bright light on our celebrity culture and how insanely we worship these people's lives. And how corrupting a culture that worships a prosperity doctrine, wealth, and power/fame can be. In some respects Shockaholic is a horror tale. Carrie's life is not one you'd envy. It's filled with posturing and evil marketing people.
There's one enlightening chapter on Michael Jackson, in which Fisher states that Michael was if anything asexual. He's involvement with small children was more about escaping his celebrity and fame than anything else. She points out that small children tend to be less prone to "fan worship" or "star-struck", they don't quite understand it yet. It may sound like a justification, but she makes quite a few valid points. And to be honest, I never bought the argument that Jackson was a pedophile. Mainly because I couldn't imagine him having sex with anyone. And I get how people can fall outside strict gender or sexual orientation boundaries. Our society is a bit freakish about sex. We all think that everyone's experience is ours. That if you are still a virgin at 50, 60, 100...there's something wrong with you. Or if you've slept with lots of people - you are a slut. Not true. People can't be defined that neatly. And not everyone is turned on by the same things.
At any rate her depiction of her friend Michael is oddly endearing and enlightening. Not what you'd expect.
5. Did watch Nashville finally. Better than expected. Connie Britton's voice reminds me a great deal of Reba McIntyre's and Hayden Pantierre sounds a lot like LeeAnne Rhimes with a bit of Taylor Swift thrown in, although she looks more like Lee-Anne.
I have mixed feelings about some of the music - but that's mainly because I'm not necessarily a country-music fan.
That said I liked both the songs Undermine and No One Loves You Like I Do. And thought both Pantierr and Britton did a good job performing them. Pantierre has a leg up on Britton - she's performed songs a lot more recently, Britton hired voice coaches to help her. And she's not bad.
What is working for me in this is the strong portrayal of female characters - realistically depicting how men attempt to manipulate, exploit, and control women in the music industry and in life in general. Callie Khourie does a good job of getting that across. SMASH and NASHVILLE both have this as a center theme, both are about an industry that chews up women, exploits them, and attempts to turn them into male eye-candy. And both shows depict this fairly honestly. I think Nashville is better written than Smash, less over-the-top. The music is good in both.
Jonathan Jackson is playing against type in this show and his voice isn't showcased that much. He's more country rock or punk rock - so his music is quite different than the other's being showcased. And I like this about Nashville - the variety of the styles shown, that's realistic. One assumes just one style inhabits the Nashville music scene and this is not the case.
I'm sticking with it. Both female leads are getting developed and one is not clearly better or a protagonist over the other. Last week, Juliette Barnes seemed to be a cold calculating bitch, this week she seemed more vulnerable and struggling to be taken seriously, to stop being the teen Disney queen that appealed to little girls. While Rayna came across a bit more self-absorbed and self-serving in how she was undermining Deacon's career in order to bolster her own, and justifying her actions based on how she'd aided him in the past. The Deacon/Barnes duet sort of underlines this and sheds light on it.
And there's definite chemistry between Barnes/Deacon and Rayna/Deacon. While one wonders what Teddy, Rayna's hubby is hiding and who he is. Why did she fall for him, why does she stay with him, why did she leave Deacon for him? This we aren't certain of, yet.
On Revolution - haven't exactly given up on it. I have a whole slew of episodes DVR'd. Just haven't watched anything since the premiere. As one person on my flist noted, it reminds me a great deal of a Western, or someone using sci-fi to create a Western with some of the same, ahem, issues that the last person who attempted this mash-up ran into.
Revolution sorry to say has the some of the same flaws as Firefly did, although Firefly admittedly had more interesting characters and better dialogue. Both were comic-bookish and claiming not to be. Both attempted to mash science fiction with Westerns, only to end up with a sticky and at times silly mess. Don't get me wrong, I liked Firefly. I own it on DVD - all of it. And I don't own that many things on DVD. It was a gift. I didn't buy it myself (so there is that caveat). But I know it was deeply flawed series and don't blame Fox for cancelling it. Feel much the same way about Revolution. Bot are deeply flawed series by grown men who want to write 1950s Western TV shows like Have Gun Will Travel or Maverick and they can't! Ah, the good old days. We were reminiscing about the good old days before desk-top computers, when you did everything on carbon paper or paper. And used, gasp, type-writers. I can't decide if it was easier back then. Yes, and no. Technology has made some things easier and other things far more complicated and insane.
Sort of like well mashing up the old Western drama with science fiction. That's where we're at...we have the old mashed up with the new.
Whenever I'd whine to my Granny back in the 1990s, she'd invariably relate a sad tale about
one of our many relatives. Whose lives resembled the heroine of the flick Winter's Bone. They even lived in the same area.
Whinging doesn't go over well in my family. We bop each other on the head.
2. Fake spider is permanently gone. Very happy about this. No idea why. But I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
3. On the TV show front...have realized there's really only a handful of shows that I care about watching or would miss. If they disappeared, it would be okay. No fretting or pounding of the breast, no campaigns to save them. Not that I ever did this in regards to TV series or films or books for that matter. I'm not a good fan. I don't organize campaigns to save tv shows. I figure if the network wants to cancel them, that's life.
Something else will pop up to capture my interest eventually. Granted, it would be nice if the network let the writers know ahead of time - so they could give the series a decent ending. But 9 times out of 10 even if the series got its full run - it wouldn't get a decent ending. How many tv series have you seen that had satisfying endings? Maybe 2 or 3?
So it begs the question why bother wasting time to campaign for it to continue? Naive optimism?
Should be noted that I'm a fan of weird tv series and have seen more cancelled before their time tv shows than I want to think about.
TV shows with satisfying endings - I can't really think of any that had a "satisfying" ending. Can you?
TV series that I'd buy on DVD assuming I had the money and space...
* Once Upon A Time S1-2
* The Wire S1-5
* Breaking Bad S1-4
* Game of Thrones S2
* The Good Wife S1-4
* Doctor Who S3-5 and S7
* Torchwood
4. Making my way through Carrie Fisher's Shockaholic, which is rather interesting, in some respects more so than Wishful Drinking. She shines a bright light on our celebrity culture and how insanely we worship these people's lives. And how corrupting a culture that worships a prosperity doctrine, wealth, and power/fame can be. In some respects Shockaholic is a horror tale. Carrie's life is not one you'd envy. It's filled with posturing and evil marketing people.
There's one enlightening chapter on Michael Jackson, in which Fisher states that Michael was if anything asexual. He's involvement with small children was more about escaping his celebrity and fame than anything else. She points out that small children tend to be less prone to "fan worship" or "star-struck", they don't quite understand it yet. It may sound like a justification, but she makes quite a few valid points. And to be honest, I never bought the argument that Jackson was a pedophile. Mainly because I couldn't imagine him having sex with anyone. And I get how people can fall outside strict gender or sexual orientation boundaries. Our society is a bit freakish about sex. We all think that everyone's experience is ours. That if you are still a virgin at 50, 60, 100...there's something wrong with you. Or if you've slept with lots of people - you are a slut. Not true. People can't be defined that neatly. And not everyone is turned on by the same things.
At any rate her depiction of her friend Michael is oddly endearing and enlightening. Not what you'd expect.
5. Did watch Nashville finally. Better than expected. Connie Britton's voice reminds me a great deal of Reba McIntyre's and Hayden Pantierre sounds a lot like LeeAnne Rhimes with a bit of Taylor Swift thrown in, although she looks more like Lee-Anne.
I have mixed feelings about some of the music - but that's mainly because I'm not necessarily a country-music fan.
That said I liked both the songs Undermine and No One Loves You Like I Do. And thought both Pantierr and Britton did a good job performing them. Pantierre has a leg up on Britton - she's performed songs a lot more recently, Britton hired voice coaches to help her. And she's not bad.
What is working for me in this is the strong portrayal of female characters - realistically depicting how men attempt to manipulate, exploit, and control women in the music industry and in life in general. Callie Khourie does a good job of getting that across. SMASH and NASHVILLE both have this as a center theme, both are about an industry that chews up women, exploits them, and attempts to turn them into male eye-candy. And both shows depict this fairly honestly. I think Nashville is better written than Smash, less over-the-top. The music is good in both.
Jonathan Jackson is playing against type in this show and his voice isn't showcased that much. He's more country rock or punk rock - so his music is quite different than the other's being showcased. And I like this about Nashville - the variety of the styles shown, that's realistic. One assumes just one style inhabits the Nashville music scene and this is not the case.
I'm sticking with it. Both female leads are getting developed and one is not clearly better or a protagonist over the other. Last week, Juliette Barnes seemed to be a cold calculating bitch, this week she seemed more vulnerable and struggling to be taken seriously, to stop being the teen Disney queen that appealed to little girls. While Rayna came across a bit more self-absorbed and self-serving in how she was undermining Deacon's career in order to bolster her own, and justifying her actions based on how she'd aided him in the past. The Deacon/Barnes duet sort of underlines this and sheds light on it.
And there's definite chemistry between Barnes/Deacon and Rayna/Deacon. While one wonders what Teddy, Rayna's hubby is hiding and who he is. Why did she fall for him, why does she stay with him, why did she leave Deacon for him? This we aren't certain of, yet.
On Revolution - haven't exactly given up on it. I have a whole slew of episodes DVR'd. Just haven't watched anything since the premiere. As one person on my flist noted, it reminds me a great deal of a Western, or someone using sci-fi to create a Western with some of the same, ahem, issues that the last person who attempted this mash-up ran into.
Revolution sorry to say has the some of the same flaws as Firefly did, although Firefly admittedly had more interesting characters and better dialogue. Both were comic-bookish and claiming not to be. Both attempted to mash science fiction with Westerns, only to end up with a sticky and at times silly mess. Don't get me wrong, I liked Firefly. I own it on DVD - all of it. And I don't own that many things on DVD. It was a gift. I didn't buy it myself (so there is that caveat). But I know it was deeply flawed series and don't blame Fox for cancelling it. Feel much the same way about Revolution. Bot are deeply flawed series by grown men who want to write 1950s Western TV shows like Have Gun Will Travel or Maverick and they can't! Ah, the good old days. We were reminiscing about the good old days before desk-top computers, when you did everything on carbon paper or paper. And used, gasp, type-writers. I can't decide if it was easier back then. Yes, and no. Technology has made some things easier and other things far more complicated and insane.
Sort of like well mashing up the old Western drama with science fiction. That's where we're at...we have the old mashed up with the new.