Big ... Meh

You would think that if a show you watched every episode of a television show over the course of five years, you might actually care.  But when it comes to "Big Love", the best I can do is a big shoulder shrug.  It was a soapy sudsy tail of family.  A psuedo-Morman, polygamous family but still if fashioned itself as a story of family.  Unfortunately, it was an extremely hatable, stunted family that was almost impossible to route for.  In fact, it was the kind of family that could only exist on television, regardless of marital status.  The middle wife of the group, Nicolette Grant, is shrewish individual that noone would stand to have as a college roommate let alone a life partner.  Yet, the horrendous, self-centered, navel-gazing characters were not the worst part of the show.  The writing was.

There so many nonsensical turns and unbelievable happenings on the show but instead of listing them all, let's just stick to escape from Mexico by dismemberment as the best of the worst.  Somehow a whole army of armed goons can't both shoot the people who just chopped up their prophet and make a phone call for an ambulance.  I guess crazy polygamous sects are multitaskers.  As bad as this was though, smaller but much more regular failures by the show runners were much more annoying.  The characters never grew during the entire five year period.  Despite everything that happened, they never changed.  Their character defects at the beginning of the show where the same at the end.  An episode would end with the wives reconciling, bonding, and vowing to be BBF's only to return to the exact same argument the very next episode.  Groundhog's day, everyday.

Well, it is over now.  Likely to quickly be forgotten and buried in the TV graveyard next to Evening Shade and Amen.  And how did it die.  Like it lived.  Illogical and irrational behavior on the part of the family members, the wives hurling insults at each other and doing things to deliberately get at each other, and a trying to hard to be shocking ending that somehow left the wives living happily ever after with no real income to speak of.   At least bug-eyes got to come back for a 5 second cameo before it ended.  And at least it wasn't the Lost finale.

This blog post is sponsored by Hendrickson's Home Plus.

We Will Live Forever Through our Cartoons

One (of the many) great thing about pop culture is that it gives us a common language. Something that we can bring up at your local church, school, gin joint, malt shop, or disco and everyone immediately recognizes, identifies with, or at least as an opinion on. And it sure beats talking about the weather again. But pop culture has always carried the black eye of being the snack food of society. Eat it up your Ho-Ho but ten minutes later your hungry again and go in search of some deep-fried Oreos. That just isn't the case anymore. Pop culture has transcended it mortal confines and now lives eternal within our greater cultural gestalt. We no longer sit around the fireplace listening to grandfathers tales of his days of ducking the draft or hear about how our grandmother's grandmother ventured out on the Oregon Trail, got dysentery, and died. Now, instead of handing down stories of Paul Bunyan and John Henry, we revel in the chance to expose our kids to the Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake, and Scooby Doo. This is our new oral tradition. These our generational touchstones that will be referred back to again and again. As a result our media and art are changing to reflect the entrainment of these characters on our permanent consciousness. Where art used to center on religious imagery because it was a nearly universal reference point. But our pop culture heroes are now replacing the Madonna inside the gilded frame. We decorate our walls with pictures of them. They cover our children's bedrooms. And mark the cubicles of every IT worker. Take for instance the Disney Princesses I discussed yesterday. Because everyone, young and old, knows these characters, knows their history, their backstory, one can give new significance to their visages by layering on top of it any popular trope. Or one can attempt to engage in societal commentary by placing the Princesses into modern environs. Luckily enough I have examples of both. One giving the Princesses a nice zombie make-over and another giving the Princesses a less than happily ever after.

This blog post is sponsored by Mario Brothers Plumbing Services.

Every Girls Wants to be a Princess (trademarked)

Royalty as viewed in modern culture is not based in reality. With the faux-excitement of the commemorative plate buying set for the William/Kate pairing excepted, the monarchy has lost all romanticism and exist only as a useless burden on the European tax payers. Instead, in today's world, there is only one royal title that has any real value and it is branded. Unless you wear the crown of a Disney Princess, your run of the mill king or queen can expect about the same level of respect from the general populace as guy who tries to predict the college basketball teams that will make the NCAA tournament for a living. But if you happened to spring from the loins of the Lord of Atlantis or utilize rodents as your clothing designers, you will have a good portion of the XX individuals in this country spending the first 10 years of their life ready to sacrifice their brother for the chance to be you. That's were the cache is. Forget Princess Grace. The only princesses that most generations from here on out will know by name are Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Cinderella, and Rapunzel. Most times I have a complete detachment from reality in favor of world view shaped by primary colored animations. Yet are these really the role models our daughters should have. Airheaded nymphs that believe what ever they are told. 16 year-olds ready to run off and marry the first man they meet in the woods. Disney does many things well but providing positive role models for young girls. Maybe not.

This blog post is sponsored by Vandelay Industries.

Chance of Brightest Day, Most Likely Blackest Night

The trailer for the first live-action Green Lantern movie came out last weekend. Unfortunately though, when I call it live-action, I am using the term loosely. And this greatly disappoints me.

I am, of course a bit of sci-fi, comic book dork and in the realm of the superhero universe, Green Lantern was my childhood favorite. Superman was an incredibly boring and unimaginative character and Batman was just too mainstream for my taste. I wanted a B-level star to call my own and Green Lantern fit the bill (my choice of Green Lantern over Batman was for the same nonconformist reason that I chose to root for the New Orleans Saints and Houston Astros despite growing up around Pittsburgh and the greatest sport franchises of all time) . I was sold on the galactic policeman. Of course the cartoons that my fandom was built on didn't contain any of that confusing Book of Oa backstory. Just a man and his ring. But by the time I found out that Green Lantern wasn't that special in the comic book world, one of thousands that include a dog, a squirrel, and a cucumber, he had been imprinted on my amygdala. With the kind of brainwashing that only childhood cartoons can provide, I was very excited to hear that a Green Lantern movie was on the way. Of course, at this point my hopes should have been as high as a Democrat on election day but the lessons of G.I. Joe:Rise of Cobra and Transformers 2 didn't seem to fully set in.

The casting of Ryan Reynolds should have been the first warning sign. Yes, Hal Jordan is a cocky test pilot but the Green Lantern of Hal Jordan and John Stewart are definitely serious stalwart fellows. There is no such authority exuded by the Sexiest Man Alive (or Dead for that matter - I can't imagine a dead body being very sexy). He is the jokey, snarky, ironic guy. Just because Iron Man was such a hit, doesn't mean every superhero from here on out has to be Sherlock Holmes as Tony Stark. But I always like Reynolds going back to his days as a guy in a pizza place so I was willing to overlook Hal Jordan as a poorman's Stark minus the alcoholism. Then I saw the preview.....If they were going to use so much cheap CG, why not just make it an animated feature and call it a day. They couldn't even be bothered to fashion a real suit for GL out of real materials. They had to paint him up like on of the girls in the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit issue. It looked horrible. When the next step after the three new Star Wars movies was the Cartoon Network's Clone Wars. I made complete sense. Nothing looked real in those movies. You might as well forget the expensive actors and just make it all computerized. And that is what we have with the Green Lantern movie. A whole lot of really fake looking CG done at the discount rate compared to the cost of Star Wars. If you were going to do this, why not just make another cartoon movie. At least Green Lantern has several options for his Jar Jar.

This blog post is sponsored by Ferris Aircraft.

Who Says TV Isn't Educational

It is very likely that if you are fan of musical theater, you are fan of Glee. I know I'm that toe tapping kind of guy. A weekly song and dance extravaganza staged with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. What is not to like? Well, I will tell you in two words, Will Schuester, the most annoyingly awful main character a popular show has had to bear since Joel Fleischman. It is not clear whether it is the actor or the script that has led to such repulsion but what appears on screen is a most hateable personage unlike anything outside of Wysteria Lane. The first season presented us with a hapless sap with little backbone but the second season of the show has advanced him to a selfish, self-serving whelp with little redeeming value. And every time they try to find an excuse to feature him in one for the show's main pieces, he comes off as if he assembled the entire Glee club in a desperate bid to finally feel like the cool kid in high school (And wow was his rendition of Make 'Em Laugh just painful to watch). A sorry little creature. He is a fantastic argument for home schooling. Let's just hope the rest of the show doesn't go the way of the Schue although the last couple of episodes have shown a troublesome trend. The Kurt storylines have been both heavyhanded and predictable while this week's substitute episode had breakneck shifts between plot points was all over the map. But as long as they keep filling their hours with classics of rock like below I will be there.

Side complaint - As great as Hulu is for subverting commercial TV, it is still a shame their clips have a freshness label on them. It won't be too long in the future until the above highlight becomes non-functional. And won't we all be a little worse off for the loss.

Now for the unreplicated genius of the original source material as well as the best of this lot of educational diddies. "I'm Just a Bill" gives you a better understanding of our form of government than any civics class. Plus it rocks.

This blog post is sponsored by Rapunzhair.

Even if Lebron would have stayed, Cleveland would still be the saddest place on Earth

Yes, "The Decision" has a horrible debacle of excess, ego, and ignorance. Yes, the notion that any other team was being given honest consideration as a final destination was a sham. Yes, the whole fabricated fascination with LeBron's free agency gave the false impression that the NBA was more than the a gussied up version of pro wrestling (aka the outcomes are fixed) that only matters to a dedicated niche population. But in the end, I have to say I respect the final decision that David Stern made and passed off as LeBron's. To see a free agent decision come down to something other than dollars is so rare, I think you have to take notice and give a little golf clap. To take a little less to play with friends and create a unique experiment in how to make up a professional sports team is incredibly interesting and worth watching. And the noise that was made the likes of Jordan and Magic that they would never, I mean never ever (heaven to betsy, how could you even imagine it to be so), give up being the alpha dog and seek out a situation like LeBron has with Wade in order to win a title. That is why Magic demanded to be traded away Kareem and Worthy and why Jordan pushed for Pippen to be sent packing. To prove that they could win a title on their own. Not like that quitter LeBron. Oh, wait they didn't do that did they. And Jordan's days without that strong supporting cast in Washington didn't really work out either. The rhetoric was all so disingenuous. Sure the new Miami Heat haven't set the world on fire yet but I at least am paying some attention to America's fifth most popular sport.

Of course there is the other side of the LeBron equation, Cleveland. That sad little shell of a town. Football team that can be proud that they are now good enough to lose respectfully and a baseball team that is very similar to the Indians at the being of the movie "Major League". I guess the good news is they still have their bustling tourism industry as evidenced by the below video.

This blog post is sponsored by Bromley Marks Pharmaceuticals.

One More Turn - Then I Will Come to Bed

I am in full recovery right now. I have not partaken in the forbidden fruit for several years. But there was a time when I had it bad. Really bad. It had taken over my life. I was obsessed with it. During those brief periods of time when I wasn't occupied with it, I was pondering when I would be able to get back to it. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Minutes would turn into hours and before I had spent all night cranking away at my addiction. Heck to call it an addiction is to terribly understate the situation. Of course I speak of that dark period of my life after I was introduced to the game, nay, way of life called Civilization.

It was during my freshman year when my roommate first introduced me to it and I was hooked on site. I had always loved the board game Risk and had a brief fling with Axis and Allies so I was easy pickings. Civ, as the cool kids call it, combined all the best features of those progenitors with modern technologies. Allowing your conquering forces to grow and evolve. To build your empire with actual cities named after yourself and dead pets. And all this was in the Stone Ages of the internet when the game was all single player. It was only the best game since Tecmo Bowl. And that is why the below ad for the newest version of the game speaks to me. I am those people. As my wife can attest, there were many a night when she would call down to me at 3:00 in morning to ask when I was coming to bed and I would answer in return, "Just one more turn."

This blog post is sponsored by Shards O'Glass Freeze Pops.