I am 44-years-old.
I have some amazing good times and then sometimes dark things happen that we all go through. I have been blessed this week with good fortune. On the other hand, I am still reeling from events that I’m still recovering from. Occasionally I find my voice, other times I realize the battle is not one I want to take.
I am sitting in Memphis tonight, alone without a television,, which may be the smartest thing ever. This week I haven’t seen Lost, I have had to go searching for what interests me. I found, as you know if you read this blog, is Craig Ferguson.
Last night, sans audience, he did a Tom Snyder sort of interview with Stephen Fry. It was an interview for grown-ups which is basically a state of mind, it’s not an age thing or maybe I am trying to convince myself of this. I don’t know. As an older woman, I realized occasionally I need to hear people talking about real things. About getting older, about learning new things and about being honest.
I was a kid when Tom Snyder was on the air. He smoked, he would pump his hands up and down and his tie was always askew. But he taught me a lot about pop culture. As I got older, I realized that it was Snyder (I was an nightowl as a child) that taught me not only pop culture but politics and modern society.
Ferguson is smart. He constantly talks about being middle-aged and being lucky after experiencing hard times of self-indulgence. I get that. Good Lord, I do. My age range is not of Baby Boomers or Generation X. We are in the middle. In some ways, we Inbetweeners. We never got a groovy name, dagnabbit.
I have to say, I like being talked to. Not being told what I should believe or should think. There are some smart cookies out there. Fry and Ferguson gave us that last night. Older people having conversations that delighted me.
Let me say, Stephen Fry quoted Wordsworth. They talked technology Ferguson,30 minutes, by himself most nights can be a maniac, was the subdued one and let Fry shine. He is a smart guy. He knew that Fry was chatty, smart and clever. He picked the right guest. That, my friends, is being innovative but also practicing smart business.
It’s also amusing to me that a Scotsman and an Englishman summed up the beauty of America and being an American. I kind of needed that.
I do say this which I referred to before. They talked about being older as Ferguson always does in a comic way. He didn’t have to say that last night, he showed that there was value. He showed, regardless of if it is puppets, interviewing Desmond Tutu or any night where he riffs on the days events that is one of the smartest men in television. John Carney has posted about this today as well. Ferguson won’t do this daily and I agree with John but he’s not going to do puppets daily either. He’s mixing it up. That’s why fans watch.
Maybe what he’s doing will save my generation. Let us hope because last night proved, once again, the man is pretty fantastic on a lot of levels.
As I was in Memphis last week experiencing some culture shock and working on about a dozen projects, I didn’t get to go back to my perky (Shut UP!) recaps of the only show I’ve ever given a commitment to which would be LOST.
I’m a commitmentphobe, I admit it. But LOST, you got me. I will send you a Valentine’s Day card because you are the only thing I’ve ever really cared about on the tube other than Battlestar Galactica and Celebrity Rehab. (And VH1, I have a beef to pick you which I will do later.)
Last week was trippy, but I’m not going to really go into that other than to talk about this weekend’s episode. I love that Locke, and as I think Cathy called him UnLocke, are not the same people, that the smoke monster is an asshole but then again, maybe he’s not and that, as hard as I’ve studied this show, I still have no idea who the Big Bad is and who isn’t.
With that said, other than the last 15 minutes, I thought this episode called “What Kate Does” was weak when it comes to LOST episodes. Jack, who usually vexes me by his sheer stupid to be a spinal surgeon, actually showed some moxey this week with the new weird guy, Dogen, who said that Sayid didn’t pass the test. So what does Jack do, takes the poison himself. Pretty bold.
But here is my issue, why do all the people that claim to be on Jacob’s side always act the most homicidal? I don’t get it.
Thus the reason I don’t have a clue who the Big Bad is.
The obvious things we saw in the Flash Sideways was that Ethan Goodfellow (formerly villainous Ethan Rom) was a … good fellow? He didn’t want to put needles into Claire but he was all about it back in the day of CrapHole Island.
(Side note: Where was Michael and Walt on the plane?)
We saw a little bit of the old Hurley, not being the leader anymore, asking Sayid if he was a zombie.
We witnessed, lo and behold, an infested Claire, or so creepy murderous Dogen tell Jack, who is one of those guys, and you know them in your own life, that believes the truth comes from the last person he talked to.
Sawyer in his grief was sad and I’m glad they did it, but I still don’t get Kate. Never did, never will. He was grieving, Joan Hart/Kate Austin, so what did you expect. Him throwing you down for crazy monkey sex in his destroyed village and home that he once shared with Juliet. Also, I know her father was an abusive asswipe, so why doesn’t anyone believe her. I mean, she did blow him up so there is that. (This part made me stabby.)
I will say that Sawyer’s grief was believable and Josh Holloway has become a better actor during his tenure of LOST.
Jeff Kober and Jeff Fahey always remind me of each other because they are relics of my childhood. Kober’s cameo was all too tame and antiheroish. I like it when he’s a bad ass. Both of these men should really be given more credit than they get.
Claire looked a lot like crazy Rousseau, which sort of made me glad. Christian took her back when I assumed she died during her house exploding, but that funky beast of an island just doesn’t give up now, does it?
I go back to that the Smoke Monster is a sumbitch, as we say here in Hoots proper, and although he is a crazy killing machine, but why are all Jacob’s people crazy killers?
Also, more Locke, Ben, Smoke Monster and Richard Alpert please (who was eluded to in last week’s episode in chains?) I like them the best.
P.S. Creators of Lost, if you are going to make Sayid a zombie, do it up spectacularly.
I was just talking to Left Wing Cracker offline about how I am not fan of Valentine’s Day and he is a fan of the Anti-Valentine’s Day events which I find to be very groovy. My sis, Homer, and I also decided this morning as we drank coffee looking at the snow in the sun room that we think it’s a bunch of corporate hoo-haa.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a die-in-the-wool romantic. I don’t like Valentine’s Day or the movie Titanic, but I will secretly watch a rom-com when I’m in the mood. My favorite, of course, is Shaun of the Dead.
But, I do like zombies so I guess if I were going to get a Valentine’s Day card, this would be the one I would want from Io9.
My fascination with television from the 60s bring us this morning to Snopes, which focuses on the names of the castaways at Gilligan’s Island. I knew the Skipper’s name was Jonas Grumby, but I didn’t know about Gilligan.
Yes, I do these things to occupy my very crowded mind.
“When everybody is famous for 15 minutes, it is no longer worth 15 minutes of a viewer’s time to tune in and see it.”
A compelling article from the LA times about how ad prices have gone down in late night. I think that can be considered for just about everything right now from television to newsprint.
Here’s how I see it, and I don’t like what I’m writing really, but Leno will come back unscathed from this amusing and telling episode of ego, greed and self-absorption. O’Brien is walking away with millions, but remember many people are counting pennies to buy groceries, so although he was somewhat representative of how Americans are being laid-off like crazy, he’s still not going to have to worry.
Average folks are gonna keep on worrying. We will find other diversions because although we are loyal to a degree, we are also saturated with nonstop information. What is news today is at trivia night tomorrow.
And the American public, including myself, will find something else to get outraged over because we are an OCD society. A Jonas brother dropping his abstinence ring, a presidential candidate making a sex tape (Wait a minute …) or something else will be the news du jour in roughly, oh let me think, … 15 minutes.
Where is keyboard cat to play a ditty when you need him?
John Carney has been on fire this week over at Lake Neuron regarding the late night fiasco that NBC has created. I’m honestly more intrigued with the Leno/O’Brien wars more than I probably should, and following Carney’s analysis has been an ongoing history of television.
In 1953, one of the regular performers on Godfrey’s prime time shows was a singer named Julius LaRosa. Somehow, LaRosa got on Godfrey’s bad side. The stated reason was that LaRosa missed a dance lesson which Godfrey had ordered for the entire cast. LaRosa said this was due to a family emergency. Some have claimed that Godfrey was jealous of LaRosa’s growing popularity.
Whatever happened, LaRosa performed a song one October night on the live prime time show. Afterward, Godfrey announced to the audience that this was LaRosa’s swan song and that he, LaRosa, was leaving the Godfrey program for bigger and better things.
This was a shock to everyone, including and especially Julius LaRosa. In fact, LaRosa — an immigrant — didn’t understand the term “swan song,” and had trouble comprehending at the time that he had just been fired in front of millions of viewers.
The viewing audience had no way of knowing the backstory of this on the night of the show, but it came out soon enough in the press. LaRosa held a press conference to explain that his live, on-the-air firing was completely unexpected. Godfrey held a press conference to say that LaRosa had lost his “humility.”
Godfrey would fire others in the coming weeks.
I took a big chunk of his post, but there is a lot to read there, so go on over to Lake Neuron. I think anyone with any ties to media is fascinated with this but so is the country at large. My opinion on why this is happening as we are seeing NBC, the mainstream media, botch up something so terribly because they had no business plan if Leno failed, which he did. The other thing is that NBC executives really didn’t listen to critics of moving Leno to prime time in the first place. I can’t think of anybody thinking it was a good idea months ago.
This is also a case of sociology. We also see ourselves as a society burdened with unemployment where we see someone who is respected and has not done anything wrong, who is on our televisions every night getting shafted. O’Brien has always been the likable guy of late night. There are a lot of us that feel that way right now. People losing jobs who did nothing wrong. Loyalty doesn’t matter these days and we relate with Conan.
It doesn’t matter that O’Brien will walk away, most likely, with an excellent “severance” package. The bottom line is that he was publicly humiliated due to bad planning and unimaginable ego. He will be let go for absolutely no reason at all. I think a large portion of this country who have lost their livelihoods relate to O’Brien.
If NBC doesn’t see that this move damages their entire brand, they honestly aren’t paying attention.
When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother used to tell me that if I said I was bored, then that meant that I was boring. I think, in retrospect, they told me that to shut me the hell up as I was a loud, rambunctious child who had an affection for getting my own way and for being the center of all of the attention allowed in the cosmos.
I’m 44 now and I realized something this afternoon.
I am bored out of my skull. Usually, I can find things to entertain myself. Watch Hulu, google stupid phrases like zombie turkeys or Chicken Feet recipes (where there are a surprisingly large amount I must say.)
Today, I couldn’t even get into that. I’m bored. Heartwrenchingly, undeniably bored.
I decided to practice Kung Fu with my dog Mabel. I have never studied this time-honored practice but what the hell, I was going to do it anyway. Mabel looked at me as I was kicking around the great room with disgust and then I almost pulled a hammy. So Kung Fu was out.
I then tried to pretend I was a famous singer as I did this when I was roughly 9-year-old and it always brought me out of my doldrums. However, singing Galveston at the top of my lungs could not get me out of my funk.
I thought about trying to con someone into throwing a bonfire as I do love burning me some stuff. Apparently everyone on the known planet is out of town or busy today in Hoots Common. And I’m not allowed to play with matches. Ask Homer.
So, I guess there is this:
When All Else Fails, There Is Ali
I hope some folks have some plans for me tonight as I’m going nuts.
really didn’t listen to critics of moving Leno to prime time in the first place. I can’t think of anybody thinking it was a good idea months ago.
