Today a quick post, because why post at all when there are better things to do? Also I haven't yet put this blog into a niche where it gets audiences.
I was a bit worried that the show Community would get ridiculous or stupid or simply stop being funny but since the creators are determined to have it be unpopular I guess I never had to get even a little apprehensive. The second episode was great to calm the nerves, the show is still funny, has developed since last season, and now piles the gimmicks so heavily on each episode that it's like an unhealthy sandwich, and just like an unhealthy sandwich it is forced on us by a multinational we don't particularly like. The analogy loses all credibility when one considers ingredients, but damn rhetoric.
9/30/10
9/27/10
Undercover Dross
If anyone can answer the following question for me, I'd be much obliged: Is Undercover Boss just a capitalist circlejerk? I am all for a cathartic show in this post-financial binge era, but those binging on dollars are still binging on dollars. But don't get me wrong. I'm not some sort of perverse thinker. I like the positivity of the show, and the genuine concern the boss shows for the workers he finds (picked out by the producers no doubt) while ignoring the larger issues. People who listen to their guts are born leaders, and all people are born from people who had to listen to their guts. It all makes perfect sense.
Last night's episode had a fat boss dealing with his skinny minions and getting out of breath while working the roomservice beat, the maintenance beat, and even (briefly) the sales beat. I'm getting out of breath just thinking about the goodwill he showed by giving one man five thousand dollars for a suit. I admit, I am not the sort to like largesse, but when largesse is dressed up as charity I lose my breath. A good suit can be bought for a thousand dollars or less, easily. The deals get better if you know a good tailor. Maybe, I don't know, and this is obviously a heretical thought, but the whole show could be replaced by one or two executives agreeing to forfeit raises and bonuses in order to raise the general level of pay.
The part that really gets me is how the minions meet the boss in his office, and he goes "Remember me?" all condescendingly, and tells them that he is really Robert Rupert Maximilian Guildenstern III. Then they're expected to cry, and the bosses have a habit of talking about their parents and crying. Oh everyone is sad about their parents, especially those of us who owe our parents much, but on television you should keep your composure, even if you're dealing with a woman (your employee) who got kicked out of her house as a pregnant teen and now works the graveyard shift at your motel. It's almost as if the tears of the minions are sustenance to both the impressionable audience and the boss.
I find it sickening. This is the sort of cloying 'populism' that is the new PR face of industrial callousness. CBS no doubt is paying out the 'prizes' the boss awards, and the boss learns a few lessons, and everyone is richer. Except for, you know, the rest of the employees who are still toiling as ever, and probably a little riled that they didn't get picked. Then again, what business do I have trying to equate reality with TV? Enjoy your cake, capitalists, and when you feed the scraps to the dogs and invite the cameras to educate the plebeians about your good heart and kind nature, feel good about that too. This is your time, revel in it and be glad...
Last night's episode had a fat boss dealing with his skinny minions and getting out of breath while working the roomservice beat, the maintenance beat, and even (briefly) the sales beat. I'm getting out of breath just thinking about the goodwill he showed by giving one man five thousand dollars for a suit. I admit, I am not the sort to like largesse, but when largesse is dressed up as charity I lose my breath. A good suit can be bought for a thousand dollars or less, easily. The deals get better if you know a good tailor. Maybe, I don't know, and this is obviously a heretical thought, but the whole show could be replaced by one or two executives agreeing to forfeit raises and bonuses in order to raise the general level of pay.
The part that really gets me is how the minions meet the boss in his office, and he goes "Remember me?" all condescendingly, and tells them that he is really Robert Rupert Maximilian Guildenstern III. Then they're expected to cry, and the bosses have a habit of talking about their parents and crying. Oh everyone is sad about their parents, especially those of us who owe our parents much, but on television you should keep your composure, even if you're dealing with a woman (your employee) who got kicked out of her house as a pregnant teen and now works the graveyard shift at your motel. It's almost as if the tears of the minions are sustenance to both the impressionable audience and the boss.
I find it sickening. This is the sort of cloying 'populism' that is the new PR face of industrial callousness. CBS no doubt is paying out the 'prizes' the boss awards, and the boss learns a few lessons, and everyone is richer. Except for, you know, the rest of the employees who are still toiling as ever, and probably a little riled that they didn't get picked. Then again, what business do I have trying to equate reality with TV? Enjoy your cake, capitalists, and when you feed the scraps to the dogs and invite the cameras to educate the plebeians about your good heart and kind nature, feel good about that too. This is your time, revel in it and be glad...
9/25/10
Nighttime Wasteland City Stroll
It's extremely awkward when one (yes, 'one') is walking down the street in the nighttime entertainment district and meets some friends, but one is on a mission to find a bar to go to, and undertakes that mission on behalf of a picky bunch of Russians, so one cannot go with one's friends. Then one thinks, "Damn it all, I just missed time with my rarely-seen friends only to have these rascals rush away into the night." And you get stuck in a packed bar and it's not really too much fun, but you got a bit of a buzz on so you buy more drinks, and eventually you get shortchanged somehow and hope karma will make an example of the fool who begrudges you 3 dollars in change.
It's a nighttime wasteland, and really the best part is when you're just strolling around talking to people and hooting cigarettes and watching the police move around. Few drunks are really happy, and most are just viciously intent on proving (most likely to themselves) that they are having fun, right at this moment, and are spontaneous. The most spontaneous thing a drunk does is puke, but they're liable to do other things I guess. Maybe you were expecting me to write a poem, or a short story, or an exegesis of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. In time these things may happen... I just want to spread this blog but first it has to amount to something worth hocking.
In other news I'll be apologizing (for the lack of posts yesterday) tomorrow. It was just that Community being back on TV was such a big deal, but then I tried to stream it on a 'regional television website' and got a stuttery, almost unwatchable video. I was dismayed, in truth. The sound was fine but I can't just listen to a television show.
It's a nighttime wasteland, and really the best part is when you're just strolling around talking to people and hooting cigarettes and watching the police move around. Few drunks are really happy, and most are just viciously intent on proving (most likely to themselves) that they are having fun, right at this moment, and are spontaneous. The most spontaneous thing a drunk does is puke, but they're liable to do other things I guess. Maybe you were expecting me to write a poem, or a short story, or an exegesis of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. In time these things may happen... I just want to spread this blog but first it has to amount to something worth hocking.
In other news I'll be apologizing (for the lack of posts yesterday) tomorrow. It was just that Community being back on TV was such a big deal, but then I tried to stream it on a 'regional television website' and got a stuttery, almost unwatchable video. I was dismayed, in truth. The sound was fine but I can't just listen to a television show.
9/23/10
Television Event of the Week
It was a big night on the television...
Community arrived as if nothing had happened, to start its second season. The show was perfectly nonchalant about this, which I approve of. This was probably the only reason I even turned the TV on tonight, because I wasn't about to miss it. Last year, I had pretty much given up on television as a drug, but I experimented with an episode of Community and sure enough I was in the ditch the next day.
Anyways, for those who missed the show but enjoy synopses (and who doesn't like either of those): nothing really happens. There were the prerequisite zeitgeist moments including a recurring gag aimed at Shit My Dad Says, which is later dismissed as "bad development planning' by Abed, in a moment of delicious metavision. Oh and Betty White was on, but as much as I am happy for her, the whole thing is getting out of hand, and I don't know if any show that is supposed to be self-aware can actually invite her to guest star. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense, and will attract hordes who aren't feeling blue about her sitcom, or her new upcoming movie, or the Snickers commercial (which is funny, after all). In my mind, overexposure is iffy, but then again the elderly have been given short shrift for so long that it makes sense that everyone will vote for Betty White on Facebook. It makes sense to me, and that's not saying much, so: have fun out there Betty, for the rest of us and especially for the rest of your under-appreciated cohort.
Anyways, the Betty White overdose seems to have made me a little overbearing – if not outright annoying. Time to digress: the best part of Community S2x01 was when Chang got the pay-as-you-go thing on his phone, let it report his balance, and told Jeff he was "Chang-ed"... outrageous, pathetic, inexplicably funny: this is how I remember the show working best. New professor Betty White's anthropology course is as madcap as you'd expect. After the paintball episode, of course, the fanbase was split among the lines of 'plot 'n writing' versus 'outrageous exploit' and... well I won't go there. No point in it.
This post is too long, and it might upset you, but even if it does, you (yes, you) must return to read it again. I can't wait to see where Community goes this season. This first episode is kind of exactly what it had to be, all things considered, and more or less a smirking send-up of the pilot.
And later that night Ferguson had Betty White on his show, while Jimmy Fallon countered with Pavement, Amy Poehler, and Rashida Jones. Why do I list it so? Why indeed...
And later that night Ferguson had Betty White on his show, while Jimmy Fallon countered with Pavement, Amy Poehler, and Rashida Jones. Why do I list it so? Why indeed...
9/21/10
Filthy Lucre
Oh you know I'm thinking about 'monetizing' and 'et cetera' with 'various thoughts' possibly amounting to 'anxiety and/or happiness'. The concept is great and could get me out of this damn canned soup crisis, if rapping and busking won't. (They won't.)
Today I come bearing an old link that I think is very important in this era of shills, PR spinners, and trickster media campaigns. (Though a paragraph ago I was talking about making money [But you don't know how hungry I am] so it's a bit hypocritical to go off on journalism). Anyways, sorry for the digression, but if you haven't heard of the Columbia Journalism Review, you've missed out on a highbrow, informative source of insider-type criticism. The link follows plainly, because I can't find a way to HTML it up...
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/look_at_me.php?page=2
Today I come bearing an old link that I think is very important in this era of shills, PR spinners, and trickster media campaigns. (Though a paragraph ago I was talking about making money [But you don't know how hungry I am] so it's a bit hypocritical to go off on journalism). Anyways, sorry for the digression, but if you haven't heard of the Columbia Journalism Review, you've missed out on a highbrow, informative source of insider-type criticism. The link follows plainly, because I can't find a way to HTML it up...
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/look_at_me.php?page=2
9/20/10
Canned Soup
Personally, I've never had a can of soup I particularly agree with, and my quest for good canned soup continues. Welcome to my Blog, and I am Anonymous Bosch, and if you let me I will create spectacular vistas of invented and existing things and try my best to justify the existence of the internet. Of course, justifying the existence of the internet is not a solitary mission, so I will also present the Best Things of the Internet, as I see them. Or maybe not, and I will just be a bitter, judgmental internet spectator. Even if that happens, it will be funny, written professionally – and anonymous, so that nobody will have to feel bad for an internet loser.
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