Well That Was Embarassing

So last night I posted my evaluation of the new FOX network shows to go along with my NBC evaluation. I THOUGHT! What actually happened was that my NBC evaluation vanished.
I think I know what happened. When I started writing the FOX material I decided to use the NBC post as a template. Using Open Writer I opened the posted NBC material, changed the title, removed all of the text that I didn’t want and then wrote in the new material. Simple. I’ve done it before although maybe not with Live Writer, the Microsoft product that Open Writer is a continuation of.

What I think happened is that when I posted the draft FOX article to Blogger to do a final edit, either OpenWriter or Blogger thought I was posting a revision of the NBC post rather than a new post. And since I was kind of tired last night I didn’t pick up on the warning signs that I wasn’t posting something new, like the little orange box saying "Update" instead of "Publish".

I’ll rewrite the NBC article later in the week and make sure it goes up as a new post. Now you’ll excuse me, I have to go spread some sheep manure.

Check Out My New Blog

Check out my new Blog First Against The Wall Come The Revolution. It's a work in progress, which you can tell because there are no ads on it yet. but I'm having a bit of fun with some of the dumb things that people - and Donald Trump - say and do.

Am I Getting Too Old For This?

This isn’t a review of the show I’m going to be talking about because I broke one of my cardinal rules of reviewing anything. I suppose you could call it more of a musing about the universe and my place as an amateur TV critic, as revealed by my reaction to a new show.

I signed up for Netflix a couple of months ago. There’s a whole story about being Canadian streaming video and how it’s a different experience from the one that Americans face, but that’s for another time. Generally the Netflix experience has been an enjoyable one even though I haven’t been binge watching every show available on on the service, the way we’re apparently supposed to. I usually end up watching one or two shows a night, depending on the night, but sticking with them until I’ve seen all of the available episodes.

Saturday night, after watching Ocean’s 13 (nowhere near as enjoyable as either version of Ocean’s 11 or even Ocean’s 12) I decided that I felt like a comedy. I’ve gone through the first season of Grace & Frankie which I loved so I decided that I’d try Aziz Ansari’s new series Master Of None. I had seen the rave reviews that the series had received from everybody from the New York Times to Vogue Magazine which basically called it hilarious and the greatest thing since sliced bread, or at least the greatest comedy of this year (okay, so admittedly that’s not a high bar to clear based on what the broadcast networks came up with this season. Or last season. I figured I’d give it a try and see what all the fuss was about.

I watched about half the first episode.

That’s why I’m not reviewing Master of None; my cardinal rule of reviewing anything is that you can’t give an informed opinion of anything if you only experience a portion of if. What I can tell you is why I stopped watching it. I didn’t find it funny. More importantly I didn’t find anything or anyone that I could latch onto that could hold my interest. Ansari and the three characters at the start of the episode (after his little tryst and subsequent trip to the pharmacy) were self-absorbed, self-involved, self-satisfied a--holes. There discussion of children and the impact that having children would have was enough to make me want to bludgeon all three of them so that they wouldn’t have children. An example of this was when Ansari was talking about how being a parent would keep him from having pasta. He wants pasta but having a kid means that he has to stay at home to look after the kid so he can’t have pasta. When it’s pointed out that people with kids actually have pasta, the response is that they’re just eating their kid’s Spaghetti-os. I managed to make it a few minutes longer to when Ansari and his buddy Brian were at the party for a one year-old (Brian hogs the bouncy house and gets mad because a kid in there prevents him from getting “his bounce on”) before I said to hell with this and looked for an episode of What’s My Line (with Fred Allen!) on YouTube.

The thing I look for when I’m watching most TV shows is something to hold my interest. This is usually a character that I can feel some empathy for, or sympathy for, or a situation that catches my interest. That’s what got me hooked on The Big Bang Theory from the start; I felt an empathy for Leonard being in love with someone who – at least at the beginning – had no romantic feelings for him. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt too many times. The initial mystery got me into How To Get Away With Murder, but I dropped the show recently – after the initial mystery was solved – because I didn’t like any of the characters. Actually I thought that all of the main characters should be arrested and have the keys to their cells thrown away. Having eliminated the thing that got me interested in the show it had to hold me with the characters and it didn’t have any characters that I felt any empathy or sympathy for. As far as Master of None goes, I felt nothing for Ansari or his friend who monopolized the bouncy house which was as far as I got into the regular characters.

So here’s the thing. I know I have the right to say that I didn’t like what I saw of this show. I can express a personal opinion just as well as anyone.The fact that I can give reasons – or at least I can reasonably cogently explain – why I dislike the show is even better. The problem I have is with being the voice in the wilderness; the guy who says “I hate this,” when everyone else says that “this is genius.” It bothers me because I want to know why I am this out of step with things.

(By the way I’m not kidding about “everyone” liking this show. It has an approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 91 on Metacritics with all 28 critical reviews being positive.)

There are probably a lot of reasons why I didn’t rave about this show. I have always stated that I don’t really like most comedies, with a particular distaste for Seinfeld and shows that remind me of it (and boy did Master of None remind me of Seinfeld). Then, as I have said, there is the high annoyance factor that I felt about the characters that I’ve seen. Maybe the show and Ansari would have shown me something if I’d watched more of the episode or a different episode of the series or more episodes of the series? Maybe you have to watch all ten episodes to truly appreciate the show’s genius. The question then becomes whether that is necessarily a good thing, but that’s an issue for another time. Clearly I don’t know enough about the show to deliver a truly informed impression, which is why I didn’t label this as a review of the show.

But there is a nagging doubt in my mind, and that is that I can’t truly appreciate this show because at 59 years of age I am far away from being the target audience of this show. Mark Peikert of The Wrap wrote the following: “Master of None is more articulate than any other show at putting under a microscope that generation’s neuroses, desires, and ambivalence. The series also happens to be sexy, hilarious, and very moving, a tribute to Ansari’s observational powers and ability to pinpoint the zeitgeist.” But if the reason that I can’t appreciate this show is because I can’t insinuate myself into “that generation’s neuroses, desires, and ambivalence,” is it valid for me to try to review shows for a general audience?

Problem Resolved

Title says it all. It was related to two factor authentication from Google and the need for a Google generated password to access Google websites with third-party, non-browser tools. Complicated and I tend to like things that are simple.

Troubles

I am officially having problems posting to this blog.

In the past I’ve used Microsoft Live Writer to post new entries to my blog, and before that Microsoft Word. However during my recent almost year long hiatus from blogging, something has apparently changed and I can’t use these tools. When I try I get the following error message when using Live Writer (my ancient version of Word – 2007 – gives me even less explanation):

Windows Live Writer was not able to log in to the remote server using the username and password.

Please check that the information is correct and try again.

Needless to say, the information is correct but no amount of trying again will give me the desired result. Apparently this might have something to do with two-factor identification but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to make this right. As it stands right now I can mostly post by cutting and pasting – which is what I’m doing with this post – but that gets old fast.

Any help anyone can offer me would be greatly appreciated

Sometimes A Crude Word Is The Right Word

A few days ago I got two comments on an older article that I wrote. Normally any comment about an older article indicates Comment Spam. The two comments I received on the older article were exactly the same and from the same person, which is usually a bad sign, however when I get a Blogger notification on something like that I at least read the notification before I delete the comment as Spam. But then I read the comment.

It came from a woman with the username Cindybin (and since I’m using her comment I think it’s only fair that I link to her site) and here’s what she had to say about the title of my Dick van Dyke Show Blogathon entry, In Praise Of Laura Petrie’s Ass:

It is terrible you used the a-word in the title of your article! how crude and offensive. I won't even read it now. And what gets me is that people are PRAISING you?? They don't even chastise you for using this crude language

Now normally I’d run the comment and because it is an older article no one would acknowledge its existence. But it’s been a bit quiet around here; my current Flash game obsession is getting a little stale, and I finally got that pesky leaky tub faucet in my bathroom fixed, so I was in the right place to take on something. And the topic of crude language is one I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I will grant that “the a-word” is a crude term, though I hesitate to say that it is an offensive one to the bulk of my readers. “Ass” has certainly ceased to be regarded as offensive by TV writers and producers, and indeed TV censors. The word is used in both contexts; as a reference to a person’s buttocks and as a contraction of the word that you can’t use on TV, which is created with the addition of the word “hole.” Oh yes, and as a contraction of Jackass, although that has nothing to do with what we're discussing.

Here’s the thing though. In this case “ass” is the right word to use, and probably the only appropriate one. I am writing an article on the (apparently unintended) sexual attractiveness of a TV character – and I make it clear in the article that Cindybin refused to read that I don’t feel the same way about the actress who played the character. The key to Laura Petrie’s sexual attractiveness was Mary Tyler Moore’s body shape, which I describe as a dancer’s body, lean and tautly muscular. Her body shape was emphasised by the snugly fitted clothing she wore, and in particular the Capri Pants that became her trademark in the role, as well as the dancer’s tights she occasionally wore when the character was dancing “professionally.” And guess what part of the body those clothes emphasized.

Yes, to be sure there are words that could have been used instead of “ass;” buttocks, butt, bum, booty, tush, fanny (though that one can get you into trouble in Britain; its a slang term for a woman’s vulva). They’re all “good” words (well I’m actually not that fond of “booty” but that’s just me) but they just don’t carry the same sort of sexual connotation that “ass” does. And since my post was about what I find to be sexually attractive about Laura Petrie – something that I was also emphasizing by deliberately adapting the title of Stephen Vizincey’s novel In Praise of Older Women for what I think should be fairly obvious reasons given what I was writing – a word with sexual connotations is the right word.

Words have value. It’s something that Robert Heinlein pointed out in his short novel If This Goes On---. The character Zeb Jones is working on using language in a way that will inflame people to revolt. He gives an example to the lead character, John Lyle (about Lyle’s paternity) that has Lyle ready to throttle his friend even though it is entirely accurate. It’s literally not just what you say, it’s the way that you say it. In this case the word “ass” has the right value for what I wanted to say. It’s the right word because it is vaguely crude without being truly indecent. I stand by my quite deliberate choice of that word and wouldn’t change it to satisfy anyone even if I could.

Update: Cindybin has responded:

Oh it figures. Instead of feeling guilty and embarrassed that you used crude language, you write a BLOG about it and make me out to be the one in the wrong, and then you say that you wouldn't even change a word of it. This only makes me angrier and more determined to speak up. I plan to write a ton of blogs about how people use profanity online. 

Right. First of all, I don`t think that I made her out to be the one in the wrong, except maybe for the part where I mentioned "the article that she refused to read." I feel that I defended my position on why I used the word I did. I stand by that defense. I would have been happy if Cindybin had offered a well thought out defense of her position that would have been the basis for a debate. She didn't. Instead she sent me something that was the equivalent of "you didn't repent; I intend to speak out against you and your kind."

Let me just reiterate. I chose the word I used quite deliberately because I felt and still feel that it was the best word to express what I wanted to put across. I did not use it off-handedly or gratuitously. Therefore I do not have any feelings of guilt or embarrassment over using it. I didn't even use it to shock; titilate maybe but not to shock or provoke in the way that a site like the Parents Television Council routinely does. And if that provokes Cindybin to write "a ton of blogs about how people use profanity online," well that's fine. I'll defend to the death her right to do so. Just don't expect me to agree or publicize it.

With that I am finished responding to Cindybin publicly.

Redo

I decided that I wanted to redesign my blog a bit. Quite frankly I was getting a little sick of the white on black look and I wanted to spark it up a bit in much the same way that my friend Ivan Shreve has done with Thrilling Days Of Yesterday. I’m not sure that I’m quite where I want to be with it yet, so consider the sand coloured background and the “Indian Head” Test Pattern design feature (I assure you, it is the “Indian Head” Test Pattern that so many of us boomers would start the day with) and all the rest as permanently temporary features until I come up with some better ideas. Right now I kind of like it.

Ch-Ch-Changes

I just did a modification to the blog. I’ve replaced my old third party blogroll with the Blogger version. Turns out the sit providing the old blogroll was giving me a 404 error when I tried to go there to change a few things around, so they got the bum’s rush. The modification wasn’t hard to make but checking out all of those blogs for ones that were essentially dead, that took time.

Summer of course is a good time for a TV Blogger to fiddle around with formats, concepts and general look and feel things. There isn’t much to review (no comments from the peanut gallery about how “much” I’ve reviewed in the past year) and you can try new stuff. This isn’t the end of the changes either. I want to spruce up the old joint. It may or may not be an Extreme Makeover: Homepage Edition project but there are some things I’d like to try over the next couple of months, and why not try it now.

Comment Moderation

It is with more than a little reluctance that I have decided to turn on Comment Moderation. Of late I've just been getting too much "comment spam" - usually from what I'm pretty sure are Asian sex sites - and it is irritating me to delete them when I notice that they appear. I've always valued the free flow of comments but of late the privilege has been abused, and not used by the people I want to see use it, the real readers of this site.

A New Beginning

I've finally switched over to the new, more customizable layout for Blogger, after a considerable amount of resistance. The reason for the change is that the blog commenting service that I was using - Haloscan has been shut down because the hardware and software were failing. They were prepared to switch me over to their new product Echo, but Echo costs $12 a year. Sorry no sale.

Unfortunately it was nearly impossible for me to remove the old Haloscan commenting system and regain the Blogger commenting system, so I bit the bullet and switched. Rigth now I'm mostly happy. I've migrated most of the stuff I had on the old blog and dropped a number of links that I didn't need. I am not pleased with the new location of the top Adsense ad but as far as I can tell I can't put it where I want it, which is above the title.

I'll probably make a few changes in the foreseeable future but for now this is what I've been able to come up with.

Apology Time Again

It's been a while since I've written anything for the Blog. Bad me, because while part of this has been due to circumstances beyond my control, part of it has also been a deliberate policy on my part which has been exacerbated by circumstances beyond my control.

I made a very conscious decision before the start of this TV season that I would not review a new show based on watching the pilot. There are good reasons for not reviewing a show based on the pilot. Inevitably the first episode of any new show is atypical, and that is true for a number of reasons. Pilots are inevitably about introducing people to the characters and situations that they encounter. I won't say that story comes second but the emphasis has to be setting the characters and the premise. Later episodes, after we know who's who and what's what, are inevitably truer to what the show is going to be like than the pilot.

Another thing about pilots is that they really aren't intended for those of us at home. Believe it or not that's true. In most cases pilots are made to sell the shows to the networks. They have to attract and hold the interest of the network executives who choose the shows they're going to air. And to a degree they have to sell it to the professional TV critics who get show screeners (and assorted press kit swag – I wish I could get either one!) well ahead of the premiere date so that they can tell the world how great the new show is (or not; I'm guessing that a lot of this is calculated risk). Often the episodes that they use to "sell" the shows are more spectacular than what appears in the following weeks. Don't believe me? Think about the pilot for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. The critics raved about the pilot to the point where they were calling it the best of the season, but once the second show aired the critics were picking nits like monkeys grooming each other. Another example: Bionic Woman. That show had a spectacular pilot including the rooftop battle in the rain with Katee Sackoff's evil Bionic Woman. Fabulous pilot but what came afterwards was a steaming pile of crap – and that's insulting steaming piles of crap. Time and again you will see pilots with tons of bells and whistles, explosions and car chases which are never seen again after that first episode.

Pilots are also problematical because of changes in casting and, often more importantly, behind the scenes, with changes in writers, directors, and showrunners. Often these people have a different mindset than the people they're replacing, sometimes taking the show off in a direction than was anticipated in the pilot. So you can review the pilot and discover that the show you reviewed has changed in subtle – and not so subtle – ways. And maybe the result is a show that you like better than the one you reviewed. But maybe the result is not as good if not downright bad.

So that was the reason for holding back on reviewing pilot. It's a good idea... and an experiment that I won't be doing again. Because I wasn't reviewing pilots I got caught up doing other things. Real world concerns intervened. I was sick for a week; felt like crap, and not the good kind but the "Hershey Squirts" kind. There was work that needed to be done in the garden, and then there was the garden produce to deal with – including the tomatoes that my brother grows in his garden but doesn't actually eat himself because he doesn't like tomatoes. And when I actually had time to do some writing I sort of found that I forgot how to write reviews without having that base of mutual discovery that reviewing pilots gives you. It's not quite writers block; I know what I want to say and I know what I like and I don't like about the shows I've seen, I'm just having a problem setting it up. Worst of all I think I've settled into a comfortable pattern of what to watch on a given night. Not good!

I will be back to writing reviews again, probably with some stuff coming out next week. And from now on, I'm reviewing pilots.

Soup Can Post Minus The Soup Can

Mark Evanier created the "tradition" of posting a picture of a Campbell's Tomato Soup can on his blog on those occasions when he knows or believes that he won't be able to post for a while. Well even though I haven't been posting all that often this summer I'm posting the Tomato soup can. Except that I can't post the image, and here's why.

A few days ago I got an email from my ISP, Shaw Cable telling me that because of changes they were making that would make my Internet faster, but to make this work I'd have to replace my modem which wasn't being supported by the manufacturer, which was reaching the end of its expected life span. So yesterday – Saturday – I took my old Motorola Cybersurfr modem down to the soon to be closed office in the mall and replaced it with a brand new SB5102 Surfboard Modem. I took it home and hooked it up... and I've been hating it ever since!

Downloads have been significantly, observably, slower. Images in particular have slow in downloading. Running Speedtests – including Shaw's own Speedtest – revealed download speeds hovering around 1 mbps and upload speeds of about 450 kbps. For the service that I'm paying for I am supposed to be getting download speeds as high as 7.5 mbps. Podcast downloads, which usually take about a minute now take up to ten. The breaking point came when I was trying to play poker online at Full Tilt Poker. It was a nightmare. The client kept disconnecting and at one point crashed entirely. I had to restart the program and when I did it took about five minutes for it to actually connect get me back to the tournament I was playing in. I think I can safely say that this has cost me (a small amount of) money. I've done everything that I can think of – short of calling Shaw, which is the next step after I finish writing this post – and nothing has changed. And since I don't how long this is going to take I post the Tomato Soup Can.

Ah, but of course I can't. That would mean uploading an image file and with the way things are going, who knows how long that would take. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to post the Tomato Soup Can without actually posting the Tomato Soup Can.

P.S.: It took me three tries to get this posted from Word. Wholly unacceptable.

Update: Apparently the problem has remedied itself without my having to call Shaw. Well not quite remedied itself. Turns out that for some unearthly reason best left to wizards and gurus, all it all had something to do with my power bar. I plugged the modem into the power bar as I have with just about every electronic device on my cluttered desktop. The exception is the printer because the cord won't reach. In a last desperate move I pull the printer plug from the wall socket and the modem plug from the power bar, plugged the modem into the wall socket and Hocus Kadabra, Alika Pocus (as a certain Wascally Wabbit would put it) everything is working as advertised, although I haven't tested it yet with Poker. Makes me wonder if maybe I should get a new power bar though.

Help

Okay, so I've finished scanning the 1969 TV Guide Fall Preview (very frustrating – the scanner or the program conked out when I was halfway through and I had to start all over again) and I've done up an Excel spreadsheet for my own convenience to track the shows through the year. Where the problem lies is with mid-season replacements. I've managed to work out all of them except for two hour-long time slots, and I need some help:

• When the ABC Wednesday Night Movie moved to Monday night one hour of it was replaced with The Johnny Cash Show, but what series followed Johnny Cash at 10 p.m. Eastern?
  
• What replaced the Glenn Campbell Goodtime Hour on Wednesday nights at 7:30 Eastern when Glenn's show moved to Sunday night at 9 to replace The Leslie Uggams Show?
  

If you know the answers please contact me by e-mail. There's a no-prize waiting for you.

Updated: Okay, I've found the Wednesday night show on CBS, but I'm still looking for the name of the Wednesday night show at 10 p.m. on ABC.

Fourth Anniversary Of This Madness

I really hadn't planned to commemorate the beginning of this blog this year, but Jace over at Televisionary posted about the third anniversary of his blog and, well I decided that I might as well bring this up.

Today – February 8^th – is the fourth anniversary of this blog. According to Wikipedia suitable gifts for the fourth anniversary are linen or silk (traditional) or electrical appliances. If you feel the necessity to send gifts in these categories, an up-converting DVD player or a laptop would probably qualify as an electrical appliance. Of course, if you have access to a female celebrity's silk undies....

But seriously folks, it was four years ago that I started this blog after years of hanging around at rec.arts.tv and discussing TV with a variety of people, not all of whom I agreed with. There were other newsgroups too, focussed on specific TV shows, including The West Wing (where discussions often descended into the politics with absolutely no linkage to the show), Due South (a warm little community that carried on far longer than the show), CSI, and of course The Amazing Race (where I did weekly recaps). I eventually started a blog that shared a title with my old Diplomacy zine, Making Love In A Canoe – and no, the title had nothing at all to do with Monty Python's Flying Circus (back when I was doing the zine, someone actually made that comment; it was apparently related to a sketch about American beer in their stage show – make up your own lines) – it was actually based on Pierre Berton's definition of a Canadian as someone who can make love in a canoe. That first blog was a general interest thing where I would hold out my opinions on various subjects including history and politics.

The trouble was that I kept wanting to write about TV and didn't think that my readership – whatever that readership may have been – would want to wade through the TV stuff to get to the "important" subjects. So I decided to start a blog entirely about TV. Pretty soon Making Love In A Canoe fell by the wayside and I eventually discontinued it. Well after all, one should write about what one loves. In a fit of what I thought was originality I named the new blog I Am A Child Of Television ... and immediately found out that Blogger doesn't exactly care if the name of a new blog is original, because Tony Figueroa already had a zine named Child Of Television – and a pretty good one at that.

Over the past four years this blog has evolved, as is the way of such things. Ideas have come and gone. Some of those never got beyond the dream stage; I've thought about podcasting, and about doing some sort of scheduled video presentation. They're good ideas, and others have done them, but they aren't something I feel confident in trying to pull off – a podcast featuring me going on and on about TV would not be a good thing. Other ideas have come and gone, and may come again. I did "Short Takes" about entertainment news, comments about the week's TV shows released on DVD, and my weekly PTC columns (the latter will be back but I've kind of temporarily burned out my ardour for the fight). These are good ideas, and I may revisit them in time, but "Short Takes" died because I thought others were covering the ground, and the DVD release posts died because I couldn't get them done in a timely manner.

Frustrations. I have a number of those. I get frustrated when I encounter real writers block. I get frustrated when I have trouble putting what I want to say into words and either miss the window of opportunity for writing about a show or can't get an article out that I think would be important. I have a huge worry about the state of television in Canada, where the vast majority of private stations are controlled not by local owners with local concerns who are actually doing programming in the local interest, but by a handful (three in fact: CTV Globemedia, Canwest Global, and Rogers Media) of mega-corporations based in Toronto, and there has never been government regulations to stop much more than one network owning more than one station in a city (so they company creates a second network. See E! and the A television system.). It's a cautionary tale particularly for Americans, and we're likely heading for a huge crash – Canwest-Global has a huge debt and is trying to sell its second network – but I find it hard to put into words and harder still to imagine anyone being interested in it even inside Canada let alone the world. I find it frustrating when I don't miss reviewing a show either because it's gone before I can get to it or because I fall into a viewing habit and that show isn't included – Pushing Daisies springs to mind immediately. I find it frustrating that it is very easy to write about shows that I really really love or really really hate but it's hard to write about shows that don't reach either of the extremes. I was extremely frustrated in trying to write a review of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. I was a show that I liked, but kept finding fault in because it came from Aaron Sorkin and it didn't measure up to most of his previous work either in TV or the movies. In retrospect – particularly given the stuff that has appeared on TV since, like Bionic Woman and Knight Rider – I find the show to be an undiscovered masterpiece that received nowhere near the respect it deserved.

That of course points out the biggest frustration that I have with writing about TV and that is TV itself. The American broadcast networks (and you will of course have noted that I mostly write about American broadcast TV – see my sense of inadequacy below) are getting worse not better. They are retreating from the daring and cutting edge towards the safe and predictable. There isn't a broadcast network today that would take on the headaches of an NYPD Blue, and I don't believe that most networks would take a chance with something like The West Wing. Thanks to the Writers Strike and the recession we may be leaving an era where network weasels cancel shows after two or three episodes – or at least banish them to Saturday night – but the combination of fears of FCC fines prompted by pressure groups like the PTC, and worries about being stuck with shows that are going to get killed in the ratings means that the broadcast networks are less and less likely to push the envelope when it comes to new shows. So they stick with procedurals (for our purposes defined as "television series which rely on an episodic format that does not require the viewer to have seen previous episodes")
rather than more continuity heavy fare, and they stick with cops, lawyers and doctors, rather than finding new areas of dramatic tension. Ironically the most daring of the networks right now may be NBC. Who else would try a series about a spy with a split personality (My Own Worst Enemy), a show about Robinson Crusoe set in the period (Crusoe), and a modern take on the story of King Saul and David (the upcoming Kings), not to mention a Texas high school football team and a Zen cop (Friday Night Lights and Life respectively)? Too bad the first two stank, the third probably isn't much better, and the other two are probably going to get cancelled because as good – great even – as they are they don't get the ratings they deserve.

I mentioned inadequacies and it's not just the normal ones, like seeing the men in porn (most men know exactly what I'm talking about, and those who don't either haven't seen porn or should be in it). No my sense of inadequacy in terms of writing about television comes from one area. I have essentially forced myself into the ghetto of reviewing broadcast television because I don't see most of the cable shows in Canada. Deadwood and Rome both aired uncut on the History Channel, at least a year after they had been cancelled by HBO. In fact even basic cable series can only be seen on the premium channels. I'd love to write about The Closer, Sons of Anarchy,
Crash or Skins, or just about anything from HBO or Showtime in the US, but they aren't available on the channels that I pay for. It becomes particularly frustrating when someone doing publicity for a show does promotion for a show that sounds like something that I'd love to write about but which is of no use to me because I know that I won't see the show for a year or two, if at all. Another source of inadequacy is the whole thing about screeners and press kits. It just points out how small a fish in how big a pond I am. I would love to be able to write reviews at a certain amount of leisure and still have them come out on time and with a more complete view of what the show is going to be. Oh well, a man in the desert can dream of water can't he.

Four years into this whole adventure of writing about TV as an amateur critic and the thrill hasn't entirely gone out of the gig. Sure there are times when I feel like it's a massive drag and I'd be better off doing just about anything else, but the truth is that despite all the frustrations and reinforced sense of inadequacy, the old fashioned irritation at bad series concepts, the (to me) idiotic decisions that networks make, and the sense that the part of the medium of television that is accessible to most people is not what it can and should be, I'm having a great time writing about TV and can't honestly think of anything I'd rather do to pass the time. Call it a hobby, call it an avocation, call it an obsession, I'm having FUN!

Read Me Like A Book

They gave me three choices. This is the one I thought fit best. Okay, the one I liked the best. Hey, it's better than 008 - Unassigned!

Brent McKee's Dewey Decimal Section:

771 Techniques, equipment & materials

Brent McKee's birthday: 8/15/1956 = 815+1956 = 2771


Class:
700 Arts & Recreation


Contains:
Architecture, drawing, painting, music, sports.



What it says about you:
You're creative and fun, and you're good at motivating the people around you. You're attracted to things that are visually interesting. Other people might not always understand your taste or style, but it's yours.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Housekeeping

It's been a while since I've edited the Blogroll, and I think it's time I did. There are a few inactive or dead blogs to be dumped and a few of new ones to be added. One of these days I'll have to switch over to the version of Blogger that lists the newly updated blogs.

New (to you) Blogs

Shorpy: The 100 Year-Old Photo Blog: A favourite of mine for quite a while. Not all of the photos are a hundred years old, but they certainly give a sense of the way things were in the past. A real image of the past.

South Dakota Dark: A group blog focusing on Television and popular culture. Slowed down a little over the past couple of months, but then haven't we all?

Talk Show: Occasional ramblings from Dick Cavett. I will admit that he isn't my favourite past talk show host (those would be Tom Snyder and of course Johnny Carson) but whenever I've had a chance to see one of Cavett's several shows I've enjoyed it for the same reason that I enjoyed Tom Snyder – he gives good conversation.

I Am A TV Junkie: Pretty much self-explained by the title. He watches a lot of TV (like me) and writes about it (like me), although he doesn't just review stuff that's on broadcast TV (unlike me – mostly) and he gets swag from producers (unlike me...but I'm not bitter). A good read.

The Medium Is Not Enough TV Blog: A British blog about TV. A mix of show reviews and links to news stories concerning TV on both sides of the Atlantic. A fair amount of Doctor Who-Torchwood-Sarah Jane Adventures stuff in the mix.

She Blogged By Night: A blog focussed with laser like precision on old movies. Produced by Stacia (who Stephen Cooke, Tom Sutpen, Ivan Shreve and I once knew as "The Avocado Avenger" back in the days when we were heavily into Usenet newsgroups) it is a blog in the hands of someone who knows a ton of stuff about old movies and isn't afraid to express her opinion.

Cartophilia: My old friend and fellow Diplomacy zine publisher Jamie McQuinn dropped me an email to remind me that while he does have his occasional rant blog at Tralfaz (Blech!) his main blog – the one he lavishes daily attention on – is Cartophilia, which deals with his fascination with maps. I have corrected the omission (but Tralfaz (Blech!) is still on the list), because I enjoy a good map from time to time too and it's the least I can do for a guy who sent me a puzzle piece of Cameroon from a magnetic globe.

So for now that's the housekeeping on the old bloglisting.

Keepin' It Clean - For Now

Created by OnePlusYou - Online Dating Service

Thanks to Bill Crider and Ivan Shreve for this one. (I've always wanted to know, has anyone ever called you Shrevey, Ivan?)

Not As Addicted As I Thought

58%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I thought it would be higher. Then again I'm sure I lost points for not blogging more often. Hey I'm not Mark Evanier, who has something worthwhile to say everyday. And I'm not the collective that runs if charlie parker was a gunslinger,there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats. I am one guy with two blogs (one of which he neglects terribly) and there's a strike on which means there's nothing new (and worthwhile) that I feel like writing about. Yeah, I know, excuses excuses.

Comment Round-up

I'm writing this on Friday. Saturday I'll be heading out to the Dakota Dunes Casino to watch my first live Poker Tournament – watch, not play in because my personal circumstances (I don't drive) makes it impossible for me to get out there and more importantly get back in keeping with the times they'll be starting and ending. I blame the people of Saskatoon for voting against a casino in the city not once but twice – idiots (I voted for it, not once but twice). And Sunday is the Grey Cup and my beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders are favoured to win. It's an infection and I'll tell you about it before the game.

Right now, let's look at the poll on the Writers' Strike and the comments elicited on that subject and others. So far there have been ten voters. Eight said they were with the writers 110%, one said "Mostly with the writers but AMPTP has some points on their side," and one voted for "I don't give a good God damn. With global warming, war, poverty, and corruption why are you wasting your time writing about TV and striking writers," I think I know who that may have come from. The poll is still up of course and if you haven't voted and expressed an opinion yet please do so, and if you want to comment, put something down here. I may renew the on a monthly basis if necessary in part to try to track changes in attitude as events progress (and yes I fear I may have to renew it at least once if not more often). But now for comments, not just on the strike but on other matters.

First up (but second to comment on the strike poll) is our good buddy Toby who wrote:

The longer the Big Six stay away from the bargaining table, the worse off it will be for them in the long run. Public opinion was already against them anyway, but taking this hard line will give pro-WGA bloggers more time in which to steer readers to that online video showing Murdoch, Redstone and the others chortling over how much money they'll make from the Internet.

I'm just sickened by these people who are taking that hatefuly attitude towards the writers. Obviously they don't understand the full issue and they never will take the time to learn; they're just pissed off the time is coming when they'll be forced off from the tele-teat.

Hey, if I'm willing to go without the scripted shows, they should be able to survive as well!

This is what I mean about the WGA winning the propaganda war. AMPTP's worst enemies are themselves in terms of their public statements both before and after the strike was called. Some of Counter's statements have been laughable, like the one about how it is true that the writers don't get paid residuals for "promotions" that carry advertising because the producers don't get paid for them – that money goes to the Networks not the Producers (okay, so why is Les Moonves at the table again?). It also came across as the height of arrogance for AMPTP to end what they laughingly referred to as negotiations – which amounted to we'll give you a little somethin' somethin' in return for you giving us something worth more than what we're giving you.

I'm with you about those people who are against the Writers Guild. I know where they're coming from – the whole "unions are unnecessary and worse" neo-con crap – and it's repugnant to me. Unions give workers a "big stick" (in the sense that Teddy Roosevelt referred to when he said "Walk softly and carry a big stick") which an individual worker, no matter what field they're working in, doesn't have. People collectively have more power than they do as individuals, in much the same way that 13 colonies united were stronger than 13 individual colonies. And don't kid yourself into believing that employers – any employers including AMPTP – won't take advantage when they can. I've seen too many examples of employers doing just that.

Next up we have this comment from my old pal Richard Goranson. Richard and I go back to the days when blogging wasn't even a glimmer in anyone's eyes. We both ran Diplomacy zines back in the days before the game moved almost exclusively online. And we were good (or at least I was, I think – circumstances kept Richard from making as big an impact as he might have). Anyway, here's what he wrote:

The best things that can possibly come of the strike and its inevitable aftermath:

1) The overwhelming majority of people will finally realize that Leno, Letterman and virtually all talk-show hosts really aren't funny unless they're spoon-fed their material (Unfortunately, hardly anyone will notice).

2) The shows that absolutely depend on superlative writing and already acknowledge their writers as being the driving force on the show (like BSG) will see their demand go through the roof once the strike ends.

3) People will finally see just how scripted so-called "reality TV" really is and if the strike goes on for a very long time it will likely kill the format.

4) Sports viewership will go up and networks will work harder to accommodate athletic formats that do not rely on pre-determined outcomes (so the WWE and the New England Patriots are shot to hell).

Okay Rich, let's go through these one by one. First, most people already realise that Leno and the rest are dependent on their writers. The strike hasn't changed that, largely because all of the talk-show hosts – with only a few exceptions (Regis & Kelly and The View, neither of which claim to have writers, and Ellen which does) – stopped being broadcast when the strike began. Letterman in particular knows very well that he needs the writers; he tried to go on without them in 1988 and even at the time he knew that without the monologue and other things created by the writers the show wasn't very good. There are people who would not only be able to work without writers but thrive; sadly they aren't on TV anymore. Tom Snyder or Dick Cavett come to mind as people whose abilities as interviewers and conversationalists would be ideally suited for this situation but instead the networks have comedians, and while Letterman has developed into a solid interviewer he still needs to do the monologue and the Top 10 list and the rest, and knows that he can't do it without his writers.

I'm not sure that shows that depend on superlative writing are going to see any change in demand sadly. In fact there are rumours that the strike could kill Battlestar Galactica because of demands that the producers are putting on the actors in the form of exercising the "force majeur clause" in their contracts.

The problem with your scenario about reality TV is that the reality shows will go ticking right along because they don't have "writers." More accurately they don't have writers that are members of the WGA or are actually called "writers." The only writing credits listed for Survivor – just as an example – are for Charlie Parsons who created the show, and Jeff Probst. What Survivor does have are segment producers, associate editors, "loggers" and "transcribers." IMDB credits Jennifer Bassa, Elise Doganieri, Bill Pruitt, and Bert Van Munster as writers for my beloved Amazing Race but otherwise it's producers, associate producers, field producers, assistant editors, productions assistants, loggers and transcribers, but no writers. Big Brother credits six writers (who probably write for Mrs. Moonves, aka Julie Chen) but a veritable host of production assistants, story editors, story assistants and loggers. This is one of the lesser issues that the WGA is fighting over.

You might be right about at least part of the sports thing (I saw what the Patriots did to your Bills – grade A ugly). The problem is that whether people are willing to accept an increase in sports or if the networks are willing to make the long term commitment that most sports operations require if it's only to outlast this strike.

In summation, I think that the networks think they have a plan for surviving the strike. Sadly, it involves more reality shows with most of the untried ones being pretty bad, and finding product from other sources, whether it's their cable production or overseas programming (there are reports that the four major networks are looking at Canada's own Corner Gas).

Finally we've got this from Andrew about my PTC piece:

PTC's ignorance is really fattenin' up those Short Takes, huh? This new content forking was a good thing...

Now my views regarding this week's stupidities at the PTC. You said that the PTC doesn't know about the Gossip Girl books. That's sort of correct, except PTC did mention that the series was "based on a series of popular novels by Cecily Von Ziegesar", without noting the controversy and ALA awards. And in their Oct. 26 "Weekly Wrap", they were extremely paranoid...

This month, PTC has pretty much finished all the ratings for the new '07-'08 shows. Gossip girl got red, as did "K-Ville", "Back to You", "Dirty Sexy Money", "Big Shots", "Women's Murder Club", "Bionic Woman", and "Aliens in America". "Chuck" and "Samantha Who" got yellow, and "Life is Wild" was the only new show to have gotten green. Yikes, there seems a lot of radioactivity out of these airwaves, huh?

I'm probably going to make having the PTC stuff separate from the Short Takes posts a permanent thing; 4,000+ word posts aren't really my thing, and they do tend to delay things beyond the weekend.

The Gossip Girl books aren't mentioned in the Worst of the Week post that I was writing about though it is mentioned in the show's red light earning review page which contains more than a few hoots itself: "Both the drugs and drinking are presented as glamorous, easy to obtain, and part of their everyday life. There is no identification of how young teens are able to obtain all the alcohol or the illegal drugs." It's been nearly 35 years since I was in high school (and public high school at that) and I didn't drink, smoked or use recreational pharmaceuticals, but trust me when I say that had I wanted to I wouldn't have any trouble getting any of it. I knew my fair share of kids who came to class either drunk or wasted or both. I couldn't get the PTC's email alerts to load for me so I can't comment on the paranoia. It may be time for me to use one of my spam trap email addresses to sign up.

What surprises me about the PTC's ratings of new shows? Not much really. Maybe Aliens in America getting a red light while Samantha Who? "earned" a yellow. I suppose it's the same reason that they used to like My Name Is Earl, because Samantha is supposedly trying to reform and the fact that the show "regularly features adult themes and situations such as alcoholism and infidelity," while the teenage boys on Aliens In America have "the generally positive message of cultural understanding and responsibly charting one's teenaged years is consistently drowned out by the sexual content featured in each episode." The Gander ain't getting the same sauce as the Goose here. None of it is surprising of course, although the review for Bionic Woman contains an element similar to their review of Studio 60 last year: "Sex and language were not a major issue in the first few episodes but should not be ruled out for future episodes for a show of this nature," although this time they at least gave the show a yellow light. (Studio 60 got a red light for sex because, "Sex has not been an issue at this point in the series, but as relationships progress, sex scenes can be expected;" the closest the show ever came to a sex scene were a couple of implied instances of guys seeing a topless Harriet by accident.) It's about the same amount of consistency one can expect from a group the calls Brothers And Sisters "comparatively clean" while the show's rating site says that "The sexual content is not necessarily graphic, but it is recurring and frequent all in the same. Regular references to sex and sexual innuendo are present in each episode, both in a hetero- and homosexual context. There is some harsh language, with frequent use of words such as "ass," "hell," and "damn," and gives the show a Red Light. For the most part the only thing I agree with them about is Life is Wild, which is a worthy show, exactly the sort of thing that the PTC and parents who claim to want family friendly content have been pushing for for years – and which is getting some of the worst ratings of anything on TV (maybe because it's on opposite Sunday Night Football, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and The Amazing Race). However, when I checked just a minute ago there is no PTC rating for the show. Are they changing it? Has even this show become too raunchy for the PTC? We shall see.

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