A Confession of Character

I think we love stories, not just for the stories themselves and whether or not they're true, but because of the characters who inhabit the tale.  We want people whose company we enjoy, who make us laugh, or even someone we love to hate, someone who engages our thoughts and emotions in a vivid way.

We're in the midst of television premiere season, the Emmys aired recently, and, as always, I watch too much of the idiot box.  Now, one of the reasons I love TV is that it allows characters to boil, simmer, and grow over time.  Unfortunately, the nature of the medium frequently requires its characters to stay static, to only have the illusion of change, because networks don't want a character on a popular show to suddenly become unrecognizable.  That said, there is a power in inviting your favorite people into your home each week, and that is the true power of television: familiarity.

So, I began to consider my current favorite television characters, and came up with a list of five.  I had to develop some criteria; obviously, the show had to be currently on the air (sorry, Agent Dale Cooper). Also, no reality personalities (sorry, Coach) or people essentially playing themselves (sorry, Louis C.K.), and no character from a show that has been on the air for only one season (sorry, Tyrion Lannister). This ended up being the trickiest bit, only one character per show.  As each selected character is part of a talented ensemble, this became a grueling internal debate.  Yes, I am the sort of person who debates with himself over fictional characters on television. Anyway, despite some rough near-misses (sorry, Kenny Powers), here are....

MY FIVE FAVORITE CURRENT TELEVISION CHARACTERS

Boyd Crowder (Justified)

First, I will point to this blog's very first post.  This one is pretty much a given, isn't it? I don't know that I have much to add, other than Walt Goggins continues to amaze, and even though Boyd seems back on the forking path of outlaw ways, I doubt it will be that easy for him.  Sorry, Raylan Givens and Art Mullen.


Ron Swanson (Parks and Recreation)

I don't think anyone could have predicted that, out of this fantastic collective, Nick Offerman's Ron would be the guy who would raise the level of the show from good to great. Head of a governmental department yet staunchly anti-government, Ron is still quietly supportive of those around him. All he really wants is a nice variety of meats and breakfast fare, some woodworking equipment, and quiet.  The Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness speaks for itself. Sorry, Leslie Knope, Tom Haverford, April Ludgate, and Andy Dwyer.


Walter Bishop (Fringe)

A wingnut scientist who fixates on snack foods and casually drops LSD could easily become a one-note joke, but John Noble absolutely infuses Walter Bishop with a humanizing sadness at the pit of his soul, and a man trying to correct his own youthful mistakes which have threatened the world around him is great dramatic fodder.  I don't wish to spoil any of Fringe's rich surprises for the many people who have unfortunately not seen it, but I will say that Noble has had many opportunities to explore both the Walt we know and Walt as he may have been.  I'm far from a sci-fi geek, but if all sci-fi were this grounded in creative, insightful writing and fully realized characters like Walter Bishop, I could be. Sorry, Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop.


Walter White (Breaking Bad)

Obviously, characters named Walt are making out pretty well on this list. Walter White (aka Heisenberg) continues to bulldoze my expectations.  Created by Vince Gilligan, one of my favorite writers in any medium, and brought to life by Bryan Cranston, Walter White is a study of a decent person doing absolutely the wrong thing for absolutely the right reasons and becoming both less and more of a man as his actions take a toll on himself and everyone around him. Breaking Bad is a fascinating take on the erosion of the middle class, a quorum on the nature of masculinity, and a lens into the nature of social contracts and the weight of the human soul. Touching all of those topics while also being a rip-snorting crime tale which shocks and surprises and astounds during almost every episode, well, adjectives fail.  And this show wouldn't exist without Walter White, as central a central character as one will find in the medium. As an aside, had I started this blog a few weeks later, it might have been titled "The One Who Knocks," instead. Sorry, Jesse Pinkman, Skylar White, Saul Goodman, Hank Schrader, and Gus Fring.


Joan Holloway (Mad Men)

It would be easy to write this one off and dismiss my critical faculties.  I mean, you can see a picture of Christina Hendricks just above, right? On one hand, 'nuff said. On the other, Joan is indeed my favorite character on the show, and not just because she's stunning/scorching/sexy.  There are lots of attractive women on television, but few get to play a character this intriguing. Mad Men is rightly praised as one of the best shows on television because of the way it approaches its material, the change in American culture in the 1960's as filtered through a group of people who work in the advertising field. Although we care about the standard tropes of drama the show presents; relationships begun, ended, and challenged, triumphs and tragedies both personal and professional, and fun characters doing interesting things in a unique environment, the fact that these events are more novelistic than most shows and can be debated and analyzed simply elevates the entire program.  Many would argue that Don Draper is the lead, but I tend to see it as more of a show about Peggy Olson, the young secretary whose creativity and desire soon have her working alongside, and even surpassing, the men.  Joan Holloway is somewhat of a counterpoint character to Peggy, a woman who is no less driven and perhaps even more confident and capable who was probably born a few years too early and is therefore content to manage the office to within an inch of its life rather than possibly one day partnering in it. That analysis may make it seem that Joan is a tragic character,  but she is anything but.  I'm just curious what Joan Holloway might be like were she to have had her formative years in, say, the 1990's instead of the 1950's.  She might well be the First Emperor of The World had that happened. Sorry, Don Draper, Peggy Olson, Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell, Bert Cooper, Harry Crane...well, pretty much most of the entire cast.

Obviously, I missed some great characters and some great shows, but this damn blog is nothing if not subjective.  If any readers haven't yet seen the shows represented here, I hope they get a chance to enjoy them as much as I do.

Watts In a Name

As illustrated in a previous post, I am intrigued by stage names and pseudonyms, and over the last couple of years I have had the opportunity to witness the act of creation made flesh by attending several burlesque shows, most recently during last weekend's New Orleans Burlesque Festival. Burlesque names are always fun, usually creative, and sometimes nigh-genius. Most of them attempt to evoke a playful cheekiness or a sense of throwback glamor, and I wanted to share with everyone ten of my favorite noms de guerre currently gracing the stage:

Betsy Bottom Dollar
Alotta Boutte
Ava Garter
Dirty Martini
Immodesty Blaize
Baby Le Strange
Charlotte Treuse
Ursula Undress
Iva Handfull
Coco Lectric & Ruby Joule

Grouping Coco and Ruby together is a bit of a cheat, but it makes it easier to explain that they belong to the same performing troupe, Austin, TX's Jigglewatts, easily my favorite name for a troupe. A close runner-up is Knoxville, TN's Cabaret Salome.  Both groups feature not only skilled and passionate performers, but wicked senses of humor and girls who not only strip, but sing.  Texas' Jolie Ampere Goodnight has the voice of an angel, and I would gladly pay money to hear Tennessee's Siren Santina perform a conventional concert in which she does not disrobe.  What can I say, I love the songbirds.

Seeing so many great performers with so many great names made me consider what a poorly-chosen burlesque name might be.  So, to honor the innate humor of burlesque and neo-burlesque, I had to generate a list to counterpoint the many clever names listed above.  Without further ado, here are ten names burlesque performers should not choose:

Penny Slots
Piscene Quality
Brazen Hussein, the Persian Pepperpot
Rue FiFi
Mena Pause
Melancholia Dane
Clams Medea
Roxy Codone
Trisha Moniasis
Virginia Dentata

Some of those names might actually work for roller derby girls, but that will be a post for another time.

The New 52

One thing I've scarcely discussed in this blog, but something I nevertheless love, is comic books.  And, at the moment, the biggest news in comics is something I mentioned briefly in an older post, the fact that DC Comics is in the midst of relauching (their editors do not care for the term "rebooting") their entire superhero line of comics with 52 all-new #1 issues.  Though some of the books are pretty much continuing as they had been (I'm looking at you, Batman and Green Lantern), other characters/concepts are being reformatted either cosmetically or wholesale (Superman and Wonder Woman, being the most recognizable) and some concepts are being pulled from the vaults and a shiny coat of paint applied (I, Vampire).  I plan to flip through most of these books and buy a fair number of them, but a few in particular have whetted my appetite.  So, without further ado, here are my...

TOP FIVE MOST-ANTICIPATED "NEW 52" DC COMICS

Action Comics

Grant Morrison may well be insane. Whereas some comic writers coast through several issues of content on one nugget of an idea, Morrison tends to throw a Googolplex of ideas at the reader to see which ones might stick. He can clearly write Superman, as his award-winning All-Star Superman collaboration with artist Frank Quitely attests, but rethinking Superman's formative years and recasting him as something of an angry young man takes chutzpah. Even if this fails, it is likely to be a glorious failure, and I can't wait to finally make my trip to my LCS where this has been awaiting me for a couple of weeks.

Demon Knights

Paul Cornell is an up-and-coming writer (some would say he's already arrived), and this medieval history of the DC Universe just looks intriguing as hell.  I'm not necessarily a nuts-and-bolts sword and sorcery/fantasy guy, but maybe Game of Thrones worked its magic on me.  Plus, Etrigan the Demon is one of the best characters in the DC stable, capable of serving as hero, anti-hero, or villain, depending on how he's handled.  I'm just really looking forward to this one.

Animal Man

Animal Man is a peculiar character best known for his self-titled series which, in the late 80's, was an early breakout work of the aforementioned Grant Morrison.  He's an unconventionally weird hero (his power is the ability to borrow characteristics of various animals) whose stories have frequently focused not just on beating up villains, but on the character's family life and struggles.  He's become something of an everyman character living in a fantastic world, and writer Lemire has few critical detractors and is capable of nuanced, idiosyncratic work.  This book may be a perfect storm.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E

This an another Jeff Lemire book.  Just look at it.  How can you not want to buy that, or at least read it?  I want to see Lemire go gonzo nutzoid, utilizing a public domain monster and a new iteration of old DC standby The Creature Commandos embroiled in espionage. Top to bottom, this may be the book to which I am most looking forward.  Feel free to psychoanalyze.

Batgirl

It should be clear by now that, as a comic book fan, I am mainly drawn to writers (though I firmly believe comics to be entirely collaborative efforts between writers and artists). Gail Simone is writing this one, controversially bringing the Barbara Gordon Batgirl back as a superhero after a long stretch in which a partially paralyzed Barbara reinvented herself as an information broker named Oracle and led a team of operatives known as the Birds of Prey while also becoming perhaps even more popular as one of the most fully realized disabled characters in the history of the medium.  So I'm curious how the very talented Simone will continue to grow Barbara Gordon and how her new status quo will be received by fandom over a period of months.

That said, I'm buying Batgirl primarily because of the covers.  Adam Hughes may be not only my favorite artist working in comics, but possibly my favorite contemporary artist period. I'm planning a post precisely on that topic, but for the moment, that's enough to get me to pick up the darn thing every month.

There are certainly more books I'm looking forward to, but each of these have a peculiarity factor or a wow factor other books don't quite have for me (I absolutely know Scott Snyder's Batman is going to be great, and while I'm curious as to Gail Simone and Ethan Van Sciver's reimagining of Firestorm, I've never particularly loved the character).  I just hope these books reach DC's stated goal: bringing both new fans and lapsed comic book readers back into the stores to buy comics.

I hope they don't also forget that thousands of us never went away, though.

Keep On Pushing My Love

So, they finally did it.

They finally put Borders out of its misery.

I recently posted on my social media home, "I loved you, but you were too stupid to live."  Let me elaborate on both counts.

Borders opened in my hometown just after I had finished work on a movie, the first movie I ever worked on, in an unpaid production assistant position that was nevertheless one of the most significant jobs I've ever undertaken.  I came back home to plan my future and, after a couple of odd jobs, I lucked into the new Borders as seasonal help.  It helped that a good friend worked there and recommended me, and after the seasonal work ended they just kept putting me on the schedule.  No complaints, as most of my co-workers were great and, like me, a good number of them were folks trying to figure out exactly where their life would take them.  I made lifelong friends and even valued the work I did.  I worked mostly in the music/video department (back when the company cared enough to staff those areas) and I learned more about wide varieties of music there than probably anyplace else in my life.  I eventually moved away and, after a stint at an independent bookstore where I learned more about bookselling than a Borders chain store could ever teach (ironically, I ended up at the indie when a Borders in Seattle wouldn't hire me because they could pay a new, untrained employee around a dollar less an hour than they would have had to pay me), I ended up back at another Borders in Los Angeles, a store that actually valued my experience.  My life pinballed around a lot, and many times when I found myself back home between gigs, I kept a good enough relationship with the hometown store that I was able to pick up some shifts and keep the bills paid.  I even went back full-time for a while after circumstances saw me back home more permanently. And even when I wasn't working at Borders, it was a place I enjoyed visiting and shopping.  If I visited a new city, it was always fun to find the local Borders and see how it measured up.

As I mentioned, I had a great bunch of co-workers at one time, people who had experience with books and media, or at least a passionate interest.  A surplus of people worked at Borders because they loved to be surrounded by books and music, even if most of them weren't true audiophiles or literati.  We were lucky that very few high school and college kids who just wanted a job they could slog through for a few hours a week to earn beer money made it through our application process.  And management actually cared about our opinions; I got more than one friend an interview at the store because I thought they'd be a good fit and most of the management seemed to value my opinion.  We had lots of employees to cover shifts, and we had enough customers that all five of our registers would frequently need to be manned on weekends.  And many nights, our crew would go grab drinks to blow off steam and complain about dumb customers and what we considered foolish corporate strategies.  Everybody bitches about work, I've found, but it turns out those foolish corporate strategies were the beginning of the end. 

I can say with some degree of authority that I saw Borders circling the drain for many a year.  This was one protracted death rattle.  I don't know what was the thing that did the company in.  Maybe it was the doing away with each store having a community relations coordinator who helped plan events for each local store.  Get rid of that position and, of course, stores are going to have fewer events and, therefore, fewer people coming into the store for events.  At the same time, stores halved their management staffs and relegated some to "supervisor" roles with less pay and less authority, showing, in my mind, a dearth of trust in the local rank-and-file who used to stress to employees that, while Borders was a chain, each store was unique and would strive to tailor itself to its community and employee strengths and interests.

Maybe it was the terrible launch of Borders.com, followed by the just plain idiotic turning over of the keys of their internet presence to Amazon.com (I cannot even begin to type the number of words to describe how, even then, I and everyone else with half a cranium knew that was a foolhardy and dangerous lapse in common sense) followed by reclaiming Borders.com well too late for it to do any good.

Maybe it was when stores began to strive to sell novelty items like the loathed, clearly gimmicky and sad Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish.

Maybe it was when a bunch of department store and/or grocery store executives started running the company and tried to sell books like any other mass-produced commodity, when books are clearly unique luxury items that tend to be bought and sold by people who care about the product.

Maybe it was when the company started pushing "make" books on the staff and the customers, tying store performance to the sale of a specific title rather than allowing employees to properly engage customers and tailor recommendations to what that customer might actually like instead of one arbitrary book.

Maybe it was the attrition of qualified managers and booksellers, as I saw several forced out, some near-criminally, with replacements barely trained and scarcely qualified or passionate for the job.

Maybe it was more than one asshat regional manager lording over dying stores and trying to motivate through fear and the promise of pain.

Maybe it was the endless shipments of mostly-useless kid's toys that most stores didn't have room for, causing the damned children's sections to be even more messy than when they were just places with picture books that clueless, entitled parents left their kids to destroy.

Maybe it was the addition of self-service kiosks at the information desks to encourage patrons to look up items and their availability without aid of a pesky, knowledgeable employee.

Maybe it was Borders' inability to see the ebook revolution on their doorstep and their late-inning partnership with the Kobo e-reader, an e-reader absolutely no one I know owns.

Maybe it was expanding too quickly during the salad years to show "growth" to stockholders and signing long-term leases that were no longer viable when the economy took a tumble.

Maybe it was panicking and relying on a flood of e-mail coupons to drive traffic into the stores, training regulars to devalue the store's merchandise, always knowing there was likely to be a new coupon in their in-box within hours or days.

It was, of course, all of those things. And more.

It was like a rockslide.  It started with a few bad decisions that were somewhat defensible, if short sighted, then became an avalanche of bad decisions, which were frequently hastily implemented at the store level, then changed to something else almost immediately, leaving employees responsible for actions which even their managers didn't fundamentally understand.

I am reminded of this thoroughly unspectacular kid I went to high school with. The only noteworthy thing about him was how small and scrawny he was. This didn't stop him from being a real loudmouth, however.  That might have been an interesting dichotomy if anything he said was ever interesting or witty, but it never was. I heard a very large athlete once say how much he'd like to hit this kid, but he was afraid he'd kill him.  So we learned to tune this gnat of a classmate out and he became mostly background noise to our lives.  Had this guy started his academic career as a prodigy of some sort, he would make a great metaphor for Borders. It was a sickly once-promising bookstore that people eventually learned to ignore even as it begged for attention.

I don't want to make it seem as if being hired at Borders made one a saint.  I worked with my share of incompetents, losers, lazy-asses, weirdos, bores, burnouts, manchildren, antisocial dicks, power-trippers, and just plain idiots.  But, on average, I've not worked with better people than those I encountered at Borders, and most of the above scofflaws tended not to last too long (or were quickly promoted to management...ZING!). But a lot of the really good people who have stuck it out for years are now having to work with liquidators and preside over the wake of their own jobs and the stores they loved. That's sad any way you look at it, and there aren't a lot of jobs to go around right now.

It is perhaps silly to be sentimental about a bookstore.  For all the good Borders did me, it also burned me and some good friends more than once, and it should not be forgotten that it helped put a lot of dedicated neighborhood bookstores out of business.  It was virulently, almost comically, afraid of unionization. Some of its leadership were not only poor businesspeople, but miserable human beings, to boot. But Borders allowed a greater degree of personality than Barnes and Noble (a store I have never enjoyed shopping in) ever did, and in its heyday it brought a large diversity of titles to areas underserved by other bookstores.  Since we tend to remember the good stuff and marginalize the bad, I guess that's the legacy it will leave behind.

I will close with this, an image that will always stick with me, among many images from that time in my life that have persevered.  In the music department, we used to be able to open up any CD and allow a prospective customer to listen to it, a perk which was roundly abused by the clientele and rightly abandoned as digital listening stations became de rigeur.  One day, a customer came to me and explained that she had to find music for her father's funeral.  She was looking for a specific version of "Danny Boy" if memory serves me correctly, and even if I don't remember her exact request, I do recall quite vividly the tears that welled up in her eyes when she heard the familiar notes of her father's favorite song.  I said little as I repackaged the CD for her to purchase, but that day I knew that my work in some miniscule little retail job had managed to profoundly effect someone's life and provide a need met in a moment of crisis. I think when most people go to work, they hope they can have a moment like that.

R.I.P.

Looking For The Heart of Friday Night

I am struck by the number of people who are freaking out about the ending of the Harry Potter movies this Friday, a series of films based on well-known books to which even non-readers probably know the ending.  I've not seen any of the movies, even though I see a lot of movies, and I don't care to start (I don't particularly want  to wade through the first two Chris Columbus films to get to the Alfonso Cuaron movie and beyond). I don't hold any ill will toward the movies or Pottermania in general and I'm glad people enjoy them, but this weekend marks the end of another franchise that does mean something to me, and I'll be sad to see it go.

I've not read the book Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger nor seen the 2004 movie of the same name starring Billy Bob Thornton, but when the television show premiered on NBC in fall of 2006, I gave it a shot.  It was one of the better-reviewed pilots of that year, and, clearly, I watch too much television.  I didn't love it at first, but it had just enough of a spark to keep me coming back.  The acting was mostly good even if they trotted out some stereotypes I'm not fond of, like the secretly sensitive bad boy and the not-so-secretly slutty cheerleader.  The show finally found a wonderfully naturalistic groove as people realized the show used football as window dressing to explore community and friendship and growing up and commitment to family and work.  It's the show blue collar America claims they want yet never support when it's on the air.  Yes, the people who watched and supported a show about family values in a small Texas town were mostly urban literati in ivory towers. The show barely got a second season despite ending as one of the best shows on TV, especially network TV, which keeps getting its dramatic ass handed to it by HBO, Showtime, AMC and FX.

That second season was easily the worst thing the show has done, particularly an absurd murder plot and then an appearance by Coach Taylor's wife's ultra-successful ex-boyfriend (played by the show's executive producer, Peter Berg).  Perhaps not being able to finish the season because of a writer's strike was a mercy killing, even though other great stories were threaded in beside the lunacy.  Still low-rated but championed by critics and a loyal fan-base, a game-changing deal was struck between DirecTV and NBC in which DirecTV ponied up some costs to produce the show. DirecTV got the rights to air the show first, with NBC effectively getting the rights to re-runs.  As FNL was one of the cheapest dramas being produced on network TV, it made sense to keep it around on a network as poorly run and starved for programming as NBC was at the time.

Seasons three through five took the bold steps of saying goodbye to graduating, popular characters, establishing new ones, and even forcing Coach Taylor out of his job and into the miserable situation of having to rebuild the football program at a neighboring, rival school.  The show kept plugging along, reveling in small victories and rich, believable characters, not all of whom were always likable. Again, the football remained largely a secondary pursuit in the drama and something the writing staff clearly struggled with at times.  The Dillon Panthers and the East Dillon Lions each won far too many games on dramatic plays in the closing seconds, but, like a girlfriend who takes too long to get ready to go out, some things you learn to forgive.

Until FNL, my favorite familial relationship on television was the father/daughter dynamic of Veronica Mars and Keith Mars, though with all the murders and various other crimes on that show, I don't know if one can argue that it's a realistic relationship.  But Eric and Tami Taylor are nothing if not realistic.  They deal with budgeting issues and pregnancy and a misbehaving teenage daughter and conflicts brought about by their jobs (Tami, at various times on the show, works as school principal and guidance counselor) with a dignity and grace.  They don't always agree and they may argue, but one never doubts their love and commitment to each other and their family.  Besides the show's lynchpin central relationship, it did a good job of dealing with a variety of issues during the show's run: racism, class issues, sports injuries, absentee parenting, addiction, mental illness, et. al.  It also presented maybe the best television episodes I've ever seen about teen sexuality (when Matt Saracen and Julie Taylor choose NOT to have sex) and the domestic cost of war (Matt Saracen burying his dad).  Maybe I just like Zach Gilford as Matt Saracen, the kid who is a fair football player, but not good enough to get a college scholarship.  I also love Adrianne Palicki as Tyra Collette, a smart, willful girl who may or may not have a future as the town slut; Jesse Plemons as Landry Clarke, the always-entertaining smartass best friend; Michael B. Jordan as Vince Howard, the street kid who thrives under the structure of football; Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, loud-mouthed booster with too much influence; and Scott Porter as Jason Street, the golden boy who loses it all and gains some of it back.  I even came to appreciate the hated "secretly sensitive bad boy," the oft-shirtless Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins.

Sadly, this is the kind of show that could have lasted a decade and still been vibrant and interesting. The fact that it made it five years and still remained the most consistently good show on network television despite terrible ratings and the curse of being "critically acclaimed" is a minor miracle.  But I happily anticipate a few years from now when I'll take a few DVDs down from the shelf and cue up a streaming service for the rest, and I'll watch the whole series again from start to finish. Honestly and truly, Friday Night Lights is one of the best damn shows I've ever seen, and it may be the best show ever done about both high school and sports. I may keep tonight's final episode on the TiVo for a few days before I finish it off, because when it's done, there shall be no more. I doubt that I will cry, but I may well feel like it.

Farewell, Friday Night Lights. It was a pleasure.

-----------------

As an aside, the ESPN Classic network has bought the rights to rebroadcast Friday Night Lights from the beginning, and Bill Simmons' GRANTLAND web venture has an entertaining oral history of the show just posted.  Both are worth your time.

Begin the Begin

Just wanted to make note of something I discovered last week and have watched three or four times since.  I told you I love title sequences! Sadly, this doesn't tell you much about the show, other than it will be kinda trippy, but the theme song is pretty great, if nothing else. (Note: original video was removed, but I located another which is essentially identical).

I should also note that I have never seen an episode of DOCTOR WHO. I've seen a minute or two here or there, and am enough of a geek that I understand the general concept of the show and recognize a good bit of its iconography, but, nope, not a single episode.  No Tom Baker. No David Tennant. Not even the adorable Billie Piper could get me to sit down and watch a Christopher Eccleston episode, nor has the lovely, crimson-tressed Karen Gillan convinced me to partake in the Matt Smith iteration of the character.

It's not that I think I'll dislike the show.  I'm fairly certain I'd enjoy it. But, simply put, when I start something, I prefer to start AT THE BEGINNING. And, in this case, that would require watching dozens and dozens of shows that started airing in 1963.  It lasted 26 years before it was cancelled. There was a failed new version in 1996 intended as a pilot for US television and it was officially brought back in a seemingly new-viewer-friendly form in 2005.  But I'm sure they utilize call-backs and easter eggs aplenty to the original run of the show, otherwise why call it DOCTOR WHO?  If you want to make something newish, then put some contemporary window dressing on it, wipe the slate clean and call it PROFESSOR WHY.

So I'll not be watching DOCTOR WHO for the moment, and I'm actually OK with that.  It's one bit of popcult mythology I've never been compelled to open up and play with.  I actually think it's pretty great that a variety of writers and producers have collaborated over the years to build a lasting sci-fi vehicle that thousands of people have embraced so fully, and the collaborative building or controlled open-sourcing of a specific mythology over decades is not unlike another medium I love, comic books.  It's not like Spider-Man or Batman have had a lone auteur voice guiding them since their inception.

Everything doesn't have to be friendly to people just discovering it.  Most corporate comic books "reboot" or "relaunch" themselves every few years, and DC Comics is about to do it again, but in my opinion that disrespects the work which has come before. If I ever decide to open my brain to DOCTOR WHO, it will be with a respect to what existed before I showed up. And hopefully it will begin with what came before.

Porn or Romance?

Some of you may enjoy Monopoly or online Risk, or Words With Friends, or that damned Angry Birds, but I have the newest, bestest game around, invented during a good many years of bookselling and book shelving.  It’s….

ROMANCE WRITER OR PORN STAR???!!!

Listed below are twenty names. Ten are current romance writers, actually collected at a local bookstore. Ten are active porn stars, or so I’ve been told.  I suspect none are real names, but I could be wrong about that.

1. Lora Leigh

2. Lorelai James

3. Addison Fox

4. Regan Hastings

5. Danielle Steel

6. Riley Steele

7. Raven Alexis

8. Alektra Blue

9. Sophia Santi

10. Chanel Preston

11. Roxanne St. Clair

12. Teagan Presley

13. Cherry Adair

14. Lexie Belle

15. Amanda Quick

16. Kristina Rose

17. Kady Cross

18. Kayden Kross

19. Jeaniene Frost

20. Alexis Ford

All kidding aside, I was taken by how most romance novelists and most porn stars try to utilize names which evoke luxury or iciness or vibrant youth or combinations thereof, yet one is selling a product to males and the other to females, for the most part.  Plyers of both trades usually, but not always, go by fake names so as not to interfere with their “real” or future careers (be it acting/modeling/bartending or writing “serious” fiction or pharmaceutical sales or teaching or whatever).  And, honestly, even with a gimme or two up there, aren’t those names basically interchangeable?  Unless you were a diehard romance reader or an avid watcher of hardcore adult cinema, you’d probably need me to tell you that the first five names are romance writers, the next five porn stars, then the odd numbers are romance writers and the even porn stars. I don’t know if there’s a great lesson to be learned, other than selling sex requires a great deal of obfuscation.

Amazing Racers

Despite toploading this blog with posts about television, I'm going to use television as an entry point yet again.  Hey, I love it and, believe it or not, it keeps my brain engaged.

Now, I'm not much for most reality television, but I accept it.  And I enjoy a certain amount of it, mostly in the "reality competition" category.  How can one not enjoy Top Chef or Project Runway, shows which feature talented people in admittedly contrived situations, yet still striving for a title which means something to them both personally and professionally?  On the other end, we have the Survivor school, in which basically anyone can show up, impress a casting director, and compete for a monetary prize.  On the trashy end, we have Big Brother and most anything on VH1.  And on the mostly decent, Emmy-winning side of town, there's The Amazing Race on CBS.  I really, really dig The Amazing Race.

TAR is, yes, a race, specifically around the world.  It features people from all walks of life going to mostly unfamiliar places and performing a series of tasks tied to each locale, and the ultimate winner pockets a cool million.  With such forward momentum and a need to rapidly move from one challenge to the next, it's rare for divas and outrageous fame-seekers to flourish, so we're left with a cross-section of people doing sometimes extraordinary, sometimes silly things amidst a vivid and colorful international backdrop.  To make it better, racers are paired in teams of two featuring preexisting relationships, so you have fathers racing with daughters, brothers with sisters, husbands with wives, and college roommates with college roommates.  Such stressful situations lead to interpersonal drama and yelling and confusion, but sometimes the viewer also witnesses transcendent moments of humanity and deep cultural profundity.  At the end of the day, it's a show where people run around and do stuff to win money, but for the audience, it's as close to different parts of the world as some may ever get, and the variety of the racers themselves shows a mass audience that people who may be different than them are just as likely as anyone else to celebrate victory, bemoan defeat, or U-Turn a Playboy Playmate. Plus, the name of the show's executive producer is Bertram van Munster. Bertram van Munster!!!
 
There have been quite a few teams over eighteen different races, and everyone has their favorites, like the aw-shucks Oklahoma cowboys Jet and Cord, or Rob and Amber, already famous in reality circles for competing on Survivor.  But, for my tastes, nobody else comes close...I love the goths, Kent and Vyxsin.

When I heard in autumn 2007 that one of the teams competing in the twelfth race would be a couple of goths, I nearly peed myself laughing.  Goths?  I love goths as much as anyone who loves goths.  I am probably more than a little bit gothic in my soul, being a creative type prone to light brooding and sparse maudlinism.  Some of the most enjoyable concerts I've ever attended have been by Sisters of Mercy and Voltaire.  I love to visit New Orleans and have toured Anne Rice's old home there. Whenever possible, I attend the glorious freakshow of DragonCon, and while I'm all about t-shirts and jeans, I love watching people so inclined show up and show out, and the goth community always does.  That said, most goths I have known are more than a little precious, and the idea of Azrael Abyss and Circe Nightshade running around in lace and eyeliner while performing grueling physical tasks had me wondering if they would be the first team to be eliminated, or if they'd hold on long enough to get canned in episode two.  It would make for an hour or two of entertaining television, for sure.  To make matters better, Kent (or Kynt, take your pick) and Vyxsin were from LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY.  It's not like they were living in L.A. and hitting up Bar Sinister every week...they were essentially COUNTRY GOTHS! Awesome!  I popped some popcorn and sat down to watch the impending train wreck.

What I should have been prepared for, knowing a lot of "different" people, and being more than a little "different" myself, was that Kent and Vyxsin were just enjoyable, positive and fun as all hell (and, technically, probably not truly goth, unless you consider subcults perkygoth or glittergoth). They were not as well-prepared as some other teams and most other teams were certainly more athletic than they, but they attacked the race with a lot of good humor and vigor, and were clearly enjoying the opportunity to see exotic parts of the world side-by-side with a trusted confidante.  And when they did break down, as almost every team does at least once in the stressful television fishbowl, it was with such theatrical flair likely well-honed through many a nightclub confrontation and LARP session of Vampire: The Masquerade that they endeared me all the more. Kent and Vyxsin did not win, but they lasted longer than six other teams and were so memorable, they were clearly a lock for an all-star edition of the show.

This past Sunday was the conclusion of said All-Star edition, aka The Amazing Race 18 aka The Amazing Race: Unfinished Business.  Kent and Vyxsin did not win, though they again finished ahead of six other teams, and occasionally came out as a bit devious and underhanded in the show's edit (because all reality competition shows try to play up rivalries and tensions as much as possible, even if they don't exist, and the ostensible "villains," the redheaded cheerleaders, had been eliminated). Though they seemed to bicker more this time around, perhaps because they've moved to Los Angeles since their first race and probably ARE hitting up Bar Sinister most weekends, they were, in my eyes at least, still a couple of vibrant and thoughtful competitors.   It's pretty great that in post-race interviews, the goths acknowledge their mistakes, but stress their devotion and friendship despite the craziness wrought by television.  I've even seen them on snark-filled message boards, thanking lovers and haters alike for watching the show.  If you're on TV, believe me, there will be haters.

Ever since Kent and Vyxsin have entered the public eye, they've become niche models and are frequently featured in Gothic Beauty magazine and Hot Topic ads, to say nothing of episodes of Bones and The Big Bang Theory, and they show up at a variety of conventions to meet fans and keep their spotlight lit.  Not knowing Kent and Vyxsin beyond what I've seen on television (though I certainly might have run into one or both of them in passing over the years), I can't say I mind them using their reality fame to support their lifestyle as I do other obnoxious asshats who think, because they came in fourth on I Love Money, that a lot of people care what they have to say and they should be paid $5,000 to appear at a club opening.  I get the feeling that my favorite goths saw an opportunity to live a life they had always wanted to live, and a certain measure of fame was a way to achieve that life.

It can be tough being different.  It can certainly be tough being different, and being yourself, on network TV.  I'm just hoping that Kent and Vyxsin have shown a few people in the world that they don't have to exist in a land of cookie cutter sterility and strip mall uniformity unless they happen to enjoy that kind of thing. To each their own, even and especially if one's own is zebra print fluorescent pink and black.

 
 

A Couple of My Favorite Things

The coolest comic book cover thus far in 2011 belongs to Image Comics' new title Blue Estate. The first issue came out last week and should be available at your LCS (local comic shop).

I love old paperback pulp novels and Robert McGinnis and his ilk.  I'm sure I'll tackle that topic at greater length in the future, but right now...wow, what a sweet cover.  I've not read it and know little about the actual content, but a copy of this awaits at mine own LCS.

Likewise, I watch too much a lot of television, and my favorite title sequence currently on the air is FX's Archer, which is James Bond as an even more arrogant, petty dick than he is already.  The title sequence has a sweet retro throwback vibe and could work just as well for an actual dramatic thriller as it does for the the absurd silliness of Archer.  I miss title sequences, which have largely gone away due to an overabundance of commercials on broadcast television, and that extra 30-60 seconds are now needed to, you know, tell a story. Archer does it right: catchy, evocative theme; bold, eye-catching design, and hints toward the roles the lead characters inhabit. Neal Holman is Archer's art director and he nailed this one.



Untitled from Muffin MacGuffin on Vimeo.

This sequence is from season two, and they've happily upgraded Amber Nash to series regular.  In a sea of wonderfully bizarre and funny characters, Amber Nash's Pam and her endless appetites and curious street wisdom are a standout.  Her and the hand puppet in that sequence never fail to crack me up for reasons I can't even elucidate.  Probably because it's the one element in the entire sequence which says "This is a comedy!"

My Outlaw Ways Are Behind Me

I'm not sure what, if anything, this blog will become, but one thing I can say is that I believe you can tell a lot about people by the stories they tell. Micro, what we say to make mom believe we didn't steal the cookie or how we won't speed on the interstate if we can have the car on Friday night, to macro, the myths and legends writ large in books and film and television and politics.  The stories that find a foothold tell us quite a bit about ourselves.

I am a Southern man. I had to leave the South to appreciate it, but being away gave me both a love for the things that work and a bitter enmity to the things that don't throughout the region.  Growing up in eastern Tennessee gave me an appreciation for the sheer character of the South's inhabitants that I only understood after existing on the West Coast for a few months.  So, while I love a good story and don't care if it's about Norwegian fishermen or Japanese au pairs or New York nebbishes, a good story evoking the South will tend to land in my wheelhouse.  If it involves some guns and a mystery to unravel, so much the better.

So it's absolutely no surprise I am rather obsessed with Justified, a show on the FX cable network.

Justified centers around Raylan Givens, a character originating in the fiction of Elmore Leonard. Raylan, played by Timothy Olyphant, is a competent lawman in the U.S. Marshal's service who can use a gun very well and probably enjoys doing so a little too much.  After killing a man in Miami he had warned to get out of town, he is reassigned to a field office near his childhood home in Kentucky.  Long-form stories stretching the length of the show mix with interesting "case of the week" set-ups which allow Raylan and his fellow Marshals to do their thing.  In many ways, it's a cop show, but to describe it as such and sneak away does the whole enterprise a disservice.

You see, Justified was an entertaining and enjoyable show through its first few episodes, the kind of thing I would watch happily just to see Olyphant echoing Deadwood's sheriff Seth Bullock while traipsing through Kentucky's local color, full of intriguing and honest and funny characters.  But somebody decided to let the first episode's bad guy, Walton Goggins' Boyd Crowder, not die from a Givens-administered bullet as had originally been intended.  Once Boyd gets out of the hospital and starts gathering followers to either bring to Jesus, or take over the local drug trade, or both, the show was able to counterpoint a good man with a darker nature with a not-so-good man struggling with his own decency and intelligence.  It's bold, Old Testament and Shakespearean stuff, and it's on TV every week.

I love the character of Raylan Givens, as compelling a protagonist as you could hope to see on a television show.  But Boyd Crowder is a revelation.  I followed Walt Goggins through seven seasons of The Shield, and his work in the final season of that show was devastating and award-worthy.  I've actually met Walt, and he's an affable guy with a serious intelligence, but seeing him portray two very different characters and build them with great complexity makes me appreciate his work all the more (As an aside, he has a supporting role in the exceptional That Evening Sun, which was filmed in and around my Tennessee hometown).

The title of this blog comes from a bit of dialogue Boyd frequently utters when discussing his weighty past, "My outlaw ways are behind me."  I am far from an outlaw, and if I have any outlaw ways they are more likely in my future than my past.  I simply believe that there is no greater drama than someone struggling with their own essential nature and wondering each day if they're going to be good or bad.  I do it, all the time, and while I don't expect every posting here to be about a controversial or philosophical topic, it might happen.

Most of it will probably be silly.  But fuck it, it's my blog, and I'll do what I damn well please with it.

I'm going to end by quoting probably my favorite dialogue from anything I saw or read last year. Raylan has located Boyd's camp in the woods where he has gathered his followers and goes to harass Boyd. He ends up giving the blessing for the meal the group is about to eat. I hit the rewind button on the Tivo a few times on this one:

"Dear Lord, before we eat this meal we ask forgiveness for our sins, especially Boyd, who blew up a black church with a rocket launcher, and afterwards he shot his associate Jared Hale in the back of the head out on Tate's Creek bridge. Let the image of Jared's brain matter on that windshield not dampen our appetites, but may the knowledge of Boyd's past sins help guide these men. May this food provide them with all the nourishment they need. But, if it does not, may they find comfort in knowing that the United States Marshal Service is offering fifty-thousand dollars to any individual providing information that will put Boyd back in prison. Cash or check, we can make it out to them. Or to Jesus. Whoever they want. In your name, we pray. Amen."