Salon's great Heather Havrilesky weighs in on Studio 60, and she had a pretty similar sense to me of the downside, though she was bigger on its upside. A chunk:

All of which brings us to Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" (10 p.m. Mondays on NBC), a show that, on the one hand, tackles the pathology of the professional circle jerk and its resulting mediocrity head-on, yet on the other hand, indulges the incredible self-importance of the TV writer to an extent heretofore unseen on the small screen.

Again, for the same reasons that it's easier to stomach the self-important banter of idealistic politicians and cops and doctors and other high-minded civil servants, it's also easier to stomach TV shows that focus on these kinds of people. On "Grey's Anatomy" or "ER" or "The Wire" or "The West Wing," we tolerate the melodrama that characters drum up about their jobs, we tolerate their all-knowing tones and their self-righteousness and their indignant attitudes because they do have pretty high-pressure jobs that serve the common good, at least in theory, and it makes sense that they're dogmatic and idealistic and stubborn about what they do and what they should be doing.

But self-important banter among magazine editors, just for example? Not so easy to swallow.

Then she spends a few paragraphs on some of its good points, where I think she's overly generous. Then more on the trouble:

The trouble is that, when Danny and Matt stop to gaze around the set of their new show, and the camera circles them dramatically like it's the last scene of Werner Herzog's classic film "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," at least one or two cells in our bodies can't help but rebel against the pomp and circumstance of the moment. It feels wrong, somehow, to romanticize TV writers this much, however talented and witty they might be. Meet a few TV writers and you'll see what I mean. It's not that they're bad people -- many of them are charming and smart and extremely friendly -- but they're richer than God, yet they always seem to be jealous of someone who's even richer and more successful than they are. Plus, even the ones who write for really crappy shows, shows that they should pay a tax for inflicting on the human populace, talk about their bad shows like they're saving the free world. ...

Plus, ask anyone who lives in Los Angeles or works in the industry: Hollywood culture is pretty distasteful, no matter how you slice it. Even though that's one of the points of Sorkin's show, dramatizing what dicks network executives can be or giving TV producers lines like Judd Hirsch's in the pilot -- "That remote in your hand is a crack pipe!" -- doesn't really change the fact that these are Hollywood wiseasses, not heroes.

Yeah, she really nailed it. The "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" reference was perfect. The whole show felt kinda that way to me. I think that ultimately, I resented Sorkin's presence, because half my brain was thinking, You've got a pretty good show here: interesting situation, good characters, etc.--so why the fuck do you have to piss all over it with self-importance, like it's Aguirre: The Wrath of God?

I remembered thinking that West Wing at first turned me off with it's self importance, but at least the characters were facing earth-shattering decisions. Here, not so much.

And the book looks pretty damn good, too, from my quick stab, tonight.

Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina came out today, and is already #2 at Amazon, so you're prolly going to be hearing a lot about it.

I checked it out tonight at Denver's great local bookstore Tattered Cover. Really interesting opening, written in Frank's usual fluid style. And I was really glad to read this in the intro:

This book is not intended to be a harangue about George W. Bush or the war in Iraq, though my views will certainly be evident. What it is instead is a critical retracing of the sophisticated steps by which some clever people in the White House, handed an opportunity and a mandate by the shocking events of 9/11, unfurled a brilliantly produced scenario to accomplish a variety of ends . . .

Thank you! As much as our fearless leader irks the hell out of me, I don't really need to spend time on a detailed analysis of how. The man will come and go as a mediocre to horrible president, and I've already lost interest. He's just not an interesting guy. But, the way the media has been co-opted and participates in promoting these preposterous fictions upon us--that's important.

That's exactly what The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are ultimately all about, and that's why they are insanely popular, and brilliant at the same time. (And most of the press still doesn't quite get them--or chuckles along with them, but doesn't get that they are the butt of the joke more than the politicians. Either they don't get it or can't figure out how to change.)

Those shows do it on a daily basis, bit by bit, but so nice to have someone pull the whole picture together.

And what a gutsy move by his publisher to devote 100 pages to a timeline, showing side-by-side what the white house was saying internally, and the alternate reality they were pitching to us. That's worth the price of the book all by itself. (The book says the timeline will be updated continually at his website. It's not live yet, but there's a "coming soon" sign.)

So far, so good. I'll let you know more as I get further.

Meanwhile, he's going to be the guest on Fresh Air on NPR Wednesday.

And here's the PW review:

Starred Review. This blistering j'accuse has vitriol to spare for George Bush—calling him a "spoiled brat" and "blowhard"—and his policies, but its main target is the PR machinery that promoted those policies to the American people. New York Times columnist Rich revisits nearly every Bush administration publicity gambit, including Iraqi WMD claims, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" triumph, the Swift-boating of John Kerry and the writing of fake prowar letters-to-the-editor from soldiers. He uncovers nothing new, but his meticulously researched recap-cum-debunking—complete with appended 80-page time line comparing administration spin to actual events—builds a comprehensive picture of a White House propaganda campaign to bamboozle the public, smear critics, camouflage policy disasters and win the 2002 and 2004 elections through trumped-up security anxieties. Along the way, he pillories a sycophantic media (Bob Woodward gets spanked hard), spineless Democrats and an infotainment culture that happily accommodates the Bush administration's erasure of the line between reality and fiction. Sometimes Rich's critique of Republican politics as cynical image-manipulation goes overboard, as in his "wag the dog" theory of the Iraq war as a Karl Rove electoral maneuver; more often, though, it's on target. The result is a caustic, hard-hitting indictment of the Bush administration, timed to make a splash in the upcoming election campaign. (Sept. 19)

Amazon link here.

Wednesday Update:

Frank was on The Colbert Report last night, and NPR's Fresh Air today (the first 3/4 of the show). Listen to Fresh Air show here.

Comedy Central repeats Colbert endlessly through the next day, and a lot of stations play or replay Fresh Air at night, so you still have time to catch both. He was great on both.

(And if you watch Colbert, tune in two minutes early to see the preview on The Daily Show. Nothing to do with Frank, but it involves Stephen's word-a-day calendar, which I won't give away, but it still has me snickering just remembering.)

you know, if you're going to cast a show along ethnic lines, it seems pretty lousy to pack two teams with A players and the other two with a lot of duds.

that white team has one jock, though hard to say yet how smart he is, and i don't see a lot of other potential. the sorority girl and the "alternative" "rollergirls" are likely to be worthless on all fronts. they always cast dorks with little to offer as writers (bastards!). seems pretty weak.

the black team was the only one with zero apparent brawn, which is a pretty basic component. it's hard to know from one puzzle, but the first indication is that he didn't cast the brightest bulbs. but then he never does. from day one MB has cast one dumb black person after another, especially men. (dumb lazy black is his most frequent cast move of all, followed by flaming homosexual and mean, hypocritical vocal christian.

i feel worst for the christians, believe it or not. the first few seasons i loved chuckling along to how nasty the hard-core christians they were, the very soul of hypocrisy. by about the third one, i realized it was just bigoted casting. of course you can make every christian look like an asshole, every homo look like a queen and every black man look dumb and lazy if that's how you cast them. it's revolting.

and i have no problem with ANY of those people getting cast. does he have to make it nearly every time? mark burnett's idea of a homo seem to equal a boa. if you're not belting out showtunes, you don't get cast. so what a surprise that the apparent gayboy turns out to be a fashion director. mark, what a departure for you. but at least he's a hunky, athletic one. that's a first, isn't it? (with all the gayboys packing the gyms, you'd think he could have found one before. and something tells me the hard-assed, muscled, outdoorsy gayguys are the ones applying a lot more than the drag queens. i don't think most drag queens really want to be on survivor. and yet, mark finds the marys and only the marys.)

I would say, no. I thought the early protests about dividing the show into racial/ethnic teams was a little premature: why not see what they do with it, whether it's revelatory or racist. So far, so good. Though some of the casting aspects have always sickened me. (More on that in the next post.)

These comments made real-time as I watched Thursday (I just can't stop myself), posted now:

I just started watching the first ep, and I literally get the chills at the beginning. I will get irritated as it goes, but the whole idea of the social experiment of Survivor is just incredible. It was one wonderful idea. (That needs some heavy tweaking, but there's time for all that.)

I'm about 20 minutes in, and so far, the cultural-split stuff has been fascinating to watch in so many different ways. It was interesting to see the Asians being almost bewildered by the lumping of them, with good reason. What they basically seemed to be saying was, "uh, we're half the population of the planet. you whiteguys may see us all as one thing, but we're a whole bunch of different cultures." they are probably the most culturally mixed of all the teams.

also fascinating to hear "cowboy" introduce himself and they're all ultra whitebread assimilationist names, like brad. (and is brad the big gayboy? i'm wagering on it.)

several of the asians seemed uncomfortable with the asian jokes, stereotyping and grouping, wanted nothing to do with it, and the black group was nearly the opposite, doing a chant about Representing.

it does some kind of unfair that the deck seems stacked physically heavily in favor of the asians and latins. the blacks have a couple big fat guys, the whites have a couple jocks, and the asians appear to have two muscle studs and possibly two female athletes, and the latins have a pro athlete and a young guy who looks like he could be the smart version of bobby jon, who will hurtle himself full-bore into anything. climbing that tree and getting the coconuts was kind of amazing. and i laughed my ass off at jp calling him jungle book.

and jp . . . he seems whiter than me, culturally--as do several of the asians. which is kind of interesting. i'm surprised/sad burnett did not cast an oreo or two on the black team, though i'm not surprised. he's been casting stereotypes on this show since day one. (stereotyping every stripe imaginable, whether it's blacks, homos, hillbillies, evangelicals . . . he's kinda gross that way.)

it is interesting so far to see how some of the groups do approach things very differently, though, and especially in how they see themselves.

it might get VERY sticky down the road when alliances come into play, though. god, picturing it getting ugly and the whites cutting down a group of blacks or whatever . . . that could be unappetizing. it will be interesting to see if things like white guilt come into play, though, and if some of them can't bring themselves to do it (or do it publicly).

i have a feeling burnett will mix up the teams soon, though, and then we'll get to see which people stick to the ethnic/cultural lines and which do not.

but so far, very interesting show.

god knows why those emmy morons gave the reality-show award to amazing race, a once-great show that turned in two pitifully boring seasons this year. (especially when project runway was the best show of any genre on TV all summer--except maybe the colbert report.) the family edition was a disaster, the challenges had grown easy, the show predictable, and the crucial casting element just awful--way too much stunt-casting with way too many brands of nasty shouters, no one actually interesting, much less likeable.

so. i tuned in to the new season, just in case they overhauled it. (i wrote the following sunday night on my laptop as i watched. i'm a little delinquent in posting.)

ten minutes in, and i'm greatly relieved by the casting.

they really have assembled some interesting groups, at least at first glance. and glad to see they went all the way for some true diversity this time: three different asian cultures represented instead of one token "asian" group for half the world's population. the indian team looks interesting--and nice--and the muslims are likely to provide a different perspective. and my first reaction to the east asians was negative, because they were bragging about where they went to college--gag me; even though i'm sure the producers put them up to it--but i got a good chuckle when they said they were heading to the homeland and then cracked up that they weren't chinese.

unfortunate that they had to cast yet another apparently annoying, self-absorbed, conceited and stereotypical gay couple. why do they have to keep dipping into that same well?

the lesbian and dad was much more interesting, though i gaped that a parent could be so insensitive to say he was disappointed in his daughter on national tv. i was appalled before he said why--i was thinking, "god, what could she have done? robbed a bank? killed a person?" oh, she was born gay. what a crime. what a dick.

part of me thinks it will be interesting to watch them work some of that out, but mostly i think he's got to be a real dick to do that, and i hate watching the dicks on this show. i predict he'll find infinite ways to illustrate what a dick he is.

model/recovered-drug-addicts is also a clever category that i would not have considered. (i was disappointed they only used model for the subtitle ID during the show.) they could prove to be totally vapid, incredibly preachy, or really self-aware and interesting. i'm hoping for the best. and always nice to get some eye-candy, though i'd prefer them with a little meat. they're not too into the beef-casting on this show, though, especially compared to, say, survivor. (where they're half naked most of the time, so it's more relevant.)

who am i forgetting?

oh, more single moms: always nice to have, but they tend not to be with us long. (doesn't this show tend to cast rather weak black teams? there was that one really strong team in i think the second season (or the first?) that almost won, but since then, i can't remember any strong ones.)

god, the coal miners. interesting choice for color, though again, we're only likely to see them briefly. and that poor woman. she basically said that her husband has always been in charge, but on the race he's going to have to learn to be 50/50. god, she has a world of disappointment coming. i applaud her goal and her positive spirit, but lady, if you married a guy who expected to be in charge, and then you let him run the show your whole marriage to-date, do you really think an ultra-stress race around the world is the best moment to radically redefine your marriage? and you think it's a good idea to televise the inevitable war? timing is everything. and he's not going to change overnight, girl. god, i hope she doesn't actually believe what she said, though she seems to.

oh, casting the one-legged woman and her new boyfriend has potential. she does show signs of being the preachy martyr type, but hopefully they were just editing in the worst of her interview moments and she'll let her abilities speak for themselves most of the time.

this seems like a 100% more interesting cast than the last few lame seasons. at least these people have potential. the last couple groups were just incredibly dull, and almost all unlikeable.

---

and let's hope phil wasn't wildly exaggerating about the changes. this show desperately needs some. not that it was a bad format; it's just getting a little tired for those of us who have been with them since the start. in years past they only made the tiniest of tweaks, most of which had virtually no impact. hopefully they really realized they should switch things around a bit before they have lost all their audience. we'll see.

---

ok, halfway through. the early elim was definitely cool. it will be much more exciting knowing that people are vulnerable at every moment. though i doubt they'll use it much, and i fear it means more dreaded non-elim rounds, which i loathe.

but it sure beats knowing that the first half of the show makes almost no difference. (it will just usually make no difference.)

meanwhile, one of the most hilarious lines ever: Do muslims believe in Buddha? Good God.

which reminds me: two airhead-chick teams? what was the point of that? (and why are 80% of the airhead teams they cast young women?)

but what was the deal with the muslim guys not shaking hands? (or just not with women?) either way, i lived in muslim countries for two years and never heard of such a thing. an unusual sect? i guess we'll never know.

---

OK, I'm an hour in (took a long break to do some work), and have to say I'm really enjoying this one.

Really glad the prettyboys appear to be pretty bright, and also seem quite nice. So far. (It was touching to see them choked up about the other team getting kicked out so unexpectedly.)

And I may have spoken too soon on the single moms. This pair might be a lot stronger than a lot of the moms they have cast. They're definitely strong-willed, and appear to be pretty sharp. And kind of funny. I really like them so far.

It was a shame to see the muslims go so soon, but I already found myself rooting for the Korean guys. I think I'm going to like them.

---

oh, and the dating people . . .

i guess if you're dating and Amazing Race casts you, you can kiss your relationship goodbye. it basically means that the producers watched you interact, stifled their laughter in front of you, and howled it up as soon as you left the room.

they generally only seem to cast completely dysfunctional couples. why can't these people see how awful they are for each other?

the one-legged woman, and her man--i don't know. she broke my heart climbing up those stair with her malfunctioning prosthetic leg. i wanted her to win so badly for a little while there. but other times, she rubs me kinda wrong--and WHAT is she doing with that control freak? he can be so awful to her. the brick-laying was revolting to watch. he wants her to be his handmaiden--never mind that he was fucking it up.

---

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

i finally finished. i can't believe Team Karma is gone already. i loved them.

oh well.

surprising to see such a tough challenge thrown at them in the first round. many of the challenges have gotten incredibly easy the past several seasons--especially the early rounds--and it was really boring to watch. (last season one challenge was to ride in a helicopter and admire the scenery. they've had more and more like that. the absolute nadir was the family season, where half the challenges seemed to be watching them be essentially spectators.) the producers really seem to have reinvigorated this series. i can only hope it continues.

it was kind of amazing to watch them all overcome that wall. so many of the teams were sure they couldn't scale it.

nothing really matched that one-legged woman. wow. (dramatically it was a shame she went so soon. whose hardship could compete with that?)

though the wonder in seeing her finish it was tempered by the sadness that she's probably doomed. she was lucky--or skillful--to be well out in front, and in a huge field on this one, but sooner or later, she's likely to face a challenge like that--or even a footrace, or a simple staircase (they have a LOT of staircases on this show), soon after an equalizer, and she's going to get left in the dust.

but what amazing fortitude. and who knows, maybe she'll last longer than i think. plus, it's not necessarily winning for everybody, especially her. if she can outlast half these teams, and experience things like scaling the great wall of china, i think she'll go home a happy woman.

but on the downside, is she so enamored with her hero/provider that she never noticed what a big homo he is? sometimes he seems SO gay.

and speaking of that . . .

the prettyboys? anyone? sometimes they seem like total straightboys, but then there are moments . . .

i feel a little bad for saying that, because i think it's actually cool that two straightguys can be that close. but i did get a vibe sometimes, especially from the darker-haired guy. i think he may have a thing for the other one. maybe. or just wishful thinking. (nothing like last season, where those two fratboys were just jonesing for each other's bods, and protesting way too much that they were straight.) probably not with these two. but maybe.

the show actually feels re-invigorated in a whole lot of ways. like zipping us right to china, and giving us the great wall in ep 1. most seasons they seem to fritter around in more ordinary settings for a long time, before we can work our way to something exotic. (though way back in season two, didn't they go almost straight to argentina? it's been awhile.) nice to see them plunging right in, in a whole lot of ways.

oh, and new funniest line from the episode. when the squabbling daters jump into the cab and he says they want the great wall, and she clarifies, very sternly, the great wall of china. hahaha! too much!

i'm halfway through the studio 60 pilot and i'm finally warming to it a bit.

the first 15 minutes were horrible.

what exactly is it about every aaron sorkin production that everything seems so incredibly high and mighty and self-serious? is it that control room operators supposedly flip their switches and cue their cameras every night with the sternness of houston space central on the first moon launch? or that every Important Person struts down every hallway and thrusts open each doorway into a burst of light as if he's augustus entering the senate to declare war on marc anthony?

i was rolling my eyes and clutching my stomach at week after week of that in the first 30 seconds. you can just feel the self-importance reeking out of it.

i stuck around because on The West Wing, he wrote some great yarns and created interesting conflicts for several years and i got numb to the self-importance and forgave him for it. it's just a bitter pill to have to swallow again.

but then . . . he kicked off his series with a lame rip-off of Network? except in a supposedly realistic setting? the thing that made network work--one of the many things--was that it was slightly over the top. it played as a heightened version of where we were heading; this--i think--is shooting for hyper-realism.

the other thing going for network was that it was original. the fact that the 60 script alluded to its ripoff for a nearly a minute straight--way too long; felt like an endless apology to the audience--and then peppered throughout the show didn't really help. it didn't feel one bit real when judd hirsh did it, because it just felt like he was re-enacting some lame version of network.

god, could he come up with a worse way to start his series? i don't know? the dinner scene sure rang false. maybe they really have dinners like that in hollywood (though aren't the networks run out of new york, by the way?)--but it sure didn't feel real.

the face-off with jordan and the wings guy--i wasn't really buying that either. it's soap opera, though, so maybe i should just enjoy it on that level. it would be easier to take it that way if it didn't drip with all this Self Importance, though. it looks like it's going to be more like Dallas than St. Elsewhere, so why not cop to that in its mood?

nothing has really felt real so far, particularly the dialogue, which is frequently razor sharp, but . . . i think they sharpened that razor too much. it's all too cute; none of it sounds real.

i did started warming when matthew perry came on, though. he's got a presence--i think he's under-rated, which is understandable--i was never a Friends-hater, but it was never a great show, and he was far better than the material.

---

ok, i finished.

interesting choice of ending/denouement, but i missed the moment where they hurled their knit caps into the air. (shouldn't that overblown queen/bowie music have been ". . . you might just make it after all"?)

So it's Saturday night, and I'm not going dancing, which is a little sad, but I've got a book deadline. Sometimes I think I should take a month off anyway--from dancing, I mean--because I appreciate it more. Not just a little more, like Christmas as a little boy. I've done that, gone as long as a month without dancing before and it's ecstatic to feel alive again, but I'm not much in the mood for starving myself while I'm working on a book.

Huh. I just realized that two weeks is about my limit for either of them without serious withdrawal pains. It was a couple years ago that I began to notice that was my writing limit. I can take three or four days off from writing and just love the freedom and the laziness, but around that fourth day, heavy restlessness starts to set in alongside it. I week and I'm really starting to feel it, having trouble sleeping more, snapping at people--out loud or at least in my head--by the start of the second week and just getting unbearably grumbly by two weeks out. Fourteen days and I'm into full-scale self-loathing. Not quite world-loathing--I don't hate the rest of the world, you people just annoy the crap out of me at that point, but I despise myself.

The trouble with pausing on the writing is that it's this weird cosmic-joke kind of dynamic where the further I get from it the more desperately I need it but the harder it is to jump back in. It's just getting out of the pool as a kid all over again, a million fucking times, the same thing--water feels great while you're in, but dry off and get readjusted to the air and it's just hell getting yourself back in again.

I guess an economist would plot the curves out meeting somewhere at two weeks. If one of a thousand different reasons hasn't pulled me back in by that point, the inertia is overwhelming, yet the loathing is even stronger and I force myself back in just to strip it away. One good day and the sun is out again.

OK, now that I think through all that, I realize the dancing I can go much longer. Two weeks I was thinking about as the period I rarely go without, but it has none of the withdrawal stuff. With dancing, the timing has more to do with the proximity of a weekend, and if I take one away, I nearly always let myself have the next one. And I am going a bit stir-crazy by that time, so I know I need it and it would be counterproductive not to, but I'm just restless and agitated and somehow incomplete, nothing approaching the self disgust of the writing withdrawal.

Oh, I just meant to come here for a minute, actually. Just wanted to say that I popped Waking Life into the DVD player for my dinner break, watched the first 15 minutes or so while I munched my homemade burger and veggies and was deeply in love with it already, especially loving the pithy little diss of the ridiculous post-modernist crap, until I hit one remark that irked me. This woman was talking about language and how fascinating it was, but as an aside said how incapable it was of describing most of what it is we feel and experience. God, I hate it when people say that. "No," I want to say, "it's not the language that's incapable. Perhaps it's you." Hahaha. I know that's a little harsh, but my point is that any one of us may be at a loss in a particular situation to convey it, but that's a measure of our inabilities. Someone, somewhere, sometime is going to capture it. Or could if they were in your shoes.

Couldn't they? I think that belief is somehow hardwired inside me as a writer--I have to believe it's possible so that I'll keep giving it a go. I keep coming up short from the full grandeur or simplicity I'd like to capture from each crucial moment, but it's only that belief that I can somehow reach a little further next time and convey it that keeps me clacking away. But for some reason I started rethinking that for a moment this time.

I thought back to the last beautiful perfect moment I couldn't describe, which was last weekend when my friends Daniel and Alejandro came up from Albuquerque unexpected to visit and I took a few hours off to go dancing with them, and . . . well, it was magical, as always, or as usually. I'm not going to attempt to convey it, but the ecstasy of the dancefloor was matched only by the sheer joy and love (yes, platonic love) I felt emanating from them and bouncing oozing out of me in return. And I remember feeling at the moment out exquisite it was and that I noticed at that moment how indescribable it was and that I had no interest in trying to capture it in words, at least not then.

So thinking back on it just now, the Waking Life dialogue faded into the background and I recalled how great it was when I first discovered the dancefloor when I was 19, and how I had all that pain and anger and glee and God knows what other kind of teenage nonsense all bottled up inside me, and the dancefloor was the one place I could express all of it. Purely. And that's the exuberance I've felt from it ever since. It's the one place in the world I feel most alive, and most expressive. All this stuff inside me that just has to get out. That's the only way I know how to say most of it. This way, with the keyboard is a distant second. Distant? I'm hesitant to use that word, because while true, the phrase conjures up the usual meaning which is one thing way out ahead and then all the others somewhere behind in a pack. The situation here is actually one out ahead, the linguistic one way behind, and then a much longer gap before the pack arrives.

Hmmmmm. I may have to rethink that. Sorry. Sex has got to be in there somewhere. And smiles, smirks, squeezes of the shoulder . . . Well, maybe that's the pack. Dancing seems to rank first in my life in terms of satisfaction, followed by writing, and then all the rest of those others.

So it occurred to me--this was all I really wanted to say--that I have this lifelong craving to dance for the same reason I have to write. So how come all the other writers aren't littering the dancefloors? Why aren't the professional dancers writing novels in their spare time? Seems odd.

---

A little aside. Still wondering if I'll ever be able to write a satisfactory story about dancing. To convey with one the power of conveying in the other, that's a toughie. I've tried. I wrote a story about it in grad school--didn't hate the attempt, but didn't do it justice, either. Maybe I should just try to capture a little piece of it next time.

That's why I admire the film Billy Elliot so much, though. Captured it. Totally. I was awestruck there in my theatre seat: They did it, they capture the ecstasy of dancing to a little boy. Of course they were not limited to words. Much easier to do on film, I think, but someday maybe I'll do it on the page.

I'll let you know.

---

OK, break's over. Three more pages to get out before I sleep tonight. Normally that would be a lot, but I know just what I want to say, and worked out the finer points on my bike ride just before dinner. Damn, I missed the sunset to spend this time with you. I miss most of them, but it was just started and I had this urge to sit out on my balcony in the cool breeze and just soak it in, but I also had to say this, so here I was.

Then the Daily Show would be funnier, too.

So many of their great correspondents keep graduating. Which is fine, because they keep finding great new ones, and we get to see the old ones in other things.

But then there's this Ed Helms situation. The show will be rolling amusing along and then Ed appears. And everything grinds to an immediate halt. In theory, his bits are funny, it's just that they're . . . not.

At first I thought he would grow into it, because they often do. They I realized he wouldn't, and they'd realize the mistake they made and move him back to writing or whatever they've done before.

But they seem to be going the opposite way. He's one of the few correspondents they've had without an ounce of humor, yet lately they seem to be using him every other day.

Strange.

The wonderful NY Daily News writer Wayman Wong posted this tonight on my Brokeback Mountain Discussion Board, looking back on the Globes ceremony:  

I'm thrilled for the movie. I'm thrilled for Ang Lee. I'm thrilled for Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry. But couldn't someone in their acceptance speech even acknowledge the simple fact that the movie is a love story about two guys, and they're thrilled at how audiences have reacted to how universal that story is? Neither the word ''gay'' or ''homosexual'' ever came up. Look, I'm not asking for anyone to read a GLAAD statement or wave a rainbow flag, but something. . .

http://davecullen.com/forum/index.php?topic=285.msg13230#msg13230

Yeah, I was feeling a little of that too.

But I really starting getting irked when the film-summary/mini-trailer they ran for Brokeback a best pic nominee also skirted it. It's been one thing to omit it in the ads--if you're selling something, why grab the one aspect most unsettling to most of the audience and stick it in their face? But this wasn't (supposedly) about selling. This was supposedly a show about awarding the work, not selling it. (I know that's really naive, I know it's not true, but at least it ought to be a mixture of awarding and selling.)

At what point is it both dishonest and implicity copping to a self of shame not to admit what the hell it's about in the damn segment devoted to it?

I'm starting to feel more and more like this is the closeted movie. One of those ridiculous cases where everyone knows the guy's gay, but everyone pretends. In certain circles. Fine to discuss it, awkardly, on talk shows but not in the ads and not on awards shows?

For once they actually showed the clip of the boys getting close to kissing, so it was suggested. Suggested, great. Still, we get shots of the guys kissing their wives and dancing with them, but they still can't show the kiss that's at the heart of the movie? One of the other nominated films showed a bedroom shot and they can't show a kiss?

This really would have been the time. Just show the damn kiss!

One of the many crucial reasons for straights to see this film is to see two guys can kiss without the world coming to an end. For a lot of people out there, it will be the first time they ever see two men kiss. That's a real problem. Millions of us kissing each other every day of the year, but we're still doing it in hiding, so they're still unnerved by it, because it's been sanitized out of their lives.

That part of our lives is still very closeted. Not the sex, not gross PDAs--nobody needs to be seeing that--but the simple tender, everyday moments of happy couples holding hands, exchanged a brief kiss in public without a second thought. For thaty 99% of all gays 99% of the time still closet ourselves.

And it's a fully self-propogating system, because the straight people will always be unsettled by it and rightfully so if we keep hiding it.

Half a billion people watchig, they claim. Show them the damn kiss.

Maybe at the Oscars.

I won't hold my breath. But maybe. At least they'll be all done worry about any effects on the oscar race by then. They'll be worrying about getting the max box office bump out of the oscarcast, though.

And yeah, that's important to me, too. I'd rather see people actually get to the film and be taken in by the whole experience than just see one kiss, out of context, and out of emotional involvement on tv.

So maybe they're right, it's unpragmatic to do it.

Maybe I'm just getting angry again, that the longer this goes on, the more times they have to quake and wonder "should we show the kiss?" "should we mention the gay word?" it just reminds me how damn preposterous the whole situation is that most of the country has been sticking their heads in the sand and pretending millions of men in this country don't kiss each other, much less fuck.

It's freaking annoying. And I know I've been getting ahead of myself, feeling like straight people are finally starting to see it as this film rolls out--and not turning into pillars of salt!--but man, do we have a ways to go.

Which all leads me back full circle to Brokeback Mountain. What a wonderful, wonderful gift to our world this film has become.