Well it took most of the day, but I copied all the posts I made at my OpenSalon blog this year over to this blog.

This will return to being my main blog. I had some tech problems here. (I started this blog in 2001 or 2002, and I'm still stuck on the dreaded Radio Userland softward. Sometimes, it gives me fits.) 

I only went back through this year, so there are some 2008 posts which you will only find on my OS blog.

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FYI: to easily find this blog, go to my main site (davecullen.com) and click BLOG in the main nav bar.

JULY 28, 2009 2:24AM

I guess that's the point. But still. I do not like that feeling.

What made me think I could watch a vampire show?

Oh right, the first season. It was amazing. And very modest does of creepiness. (I never got used to Bill biting Soukie, but she seemed safe, and they didn't linger, so I just gutted through it.)

I have never liked vampire stuff. This was different, though. Mostly. And incredibly done. It was hands down, the best show on TV last year, IMO.

This season, it's been interesting, but sluggish. The last few eps got really intense in the closing minutes. This one had me on edge most of the time, in a good way. Then the end, I shuddered from one scene to the next. Not happily.

This isn't a review, just a reaction. Alan Ball is damn good, but I might just be too much of a weenie for this. And I do not like glazed white eyes on people having sex. That really makes me shudder.

I also broke my rule about watching this show within two hours of bedtime. Damn. Now I'm going to have to stay up awhile. I do not want this shit polluting my dreams. And it will.

I don't know what I was thinking. I watched most of it over late lunch, but only had 15 minutes left, and somehow I scammed myself that it would be all right. And the worse it got, the more I told myself there were only five minutes left, and at least I'd get resolution. Right.

(I guess I'll watch the end of Kathy Griffin's  "Norma Gay" ep. It's the first good ep on that show in awhile.)

Oh, and I do not like that shaker lady.  Yes, I know I'm not supposed to, but I just had to spit the taste of her out of my mouth. (Especially with her luring in Sookie's friend, who is one of my favorites.)

And poor Laffeyette. And damn, Eric, I just started liking him. And trusting him. I do not like where that is headed.

I do like the young hot church lady coming to the good side, maybe, though not the way she ought to. Is it the good side? They got me to side with the vamps the first season, but those are some nasty bastards.

Maybe I should read the books. This lady who wrote them seems quite creative in conjuring up this world. Impressive. But yuck.

I can't stop, now, though. I have to see how this season resolves, and I'll probably be sucked in all the way to the finish. (Can we make her stop writing them?) Maybe the books will be easier. Or worse.

Hmmmmmm.

FEBRUARY 11, 2009 12:18PM

FEBRUARY 11, 2009 11:41AM

Simon Baker has rarely done much chat TV, but he was on Leno Monday night: adorable and endearing, though the guy cannot tell an anecdote.

He told about five, and they all tanked: good start, but they peter out. He can tell a beginning and a middle, but no ending.

Of course neither can Jay, and he does it for a living.

Try his first story in this second half of the interview, after the commercial break (the first clip takes you to the break):

It was great to hear him speak Australian, though.

But he didn't quite seem the sexiest man alive anymore. I like my sexy smart, and snappy. And stunning how much smaller he looked, less commanding presence. I guess the Mentalist team really knows how to shoot him.

But the smile was still great.

So here's the thing:

 I watched The Mentalist last night, and it was hard to concentrate. It didn't seem like the "real" him or something. He seemed kind of smaller--I knew he wasn't really that commanding. Or that he didn't talk that way?

Strange. It's not like I've never seen an actor on a talk show before. Maybe because I've lost interest in him, kinda?  (Just a little. But enough for a big dent.)

Temporary, probably.

I'm not sure.

I still enjoyed the show, though, especially for writing like this:

"Do you have any good clothes?"

"I'm wearing them."

"Ehhhhhh . . ."

Hehehehe. Even better delivery. 

--

Sept 7 Update:

I never did regain interest in the show too much after that. I kept expecting to, but they just kept piling up on my tivo. I eventually watched them all, but with nothing approaching my earlier joy.

Some of that was probably coincidence: the novelty of the show wearing off. Some.

A few years ago, Masterpiece Theater (now just "Masterpiece") was one of my favorite TV shows. I've still got it on my best list on Facebook and all my other friend sites (which are getting out of control).

Then all these really cheeseball productions--worse than Hallmark Hall of Fame. Did they switch producers a few years ago? But aren't they just buying most of this stuff from existing Brit productions--or do they have a hand in making it?

Last night, they kicked off their new season with Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which was marketly better. The first installment didn't play like self parody, but it was only barely engaging. I got interested, but it dragged, badly. And it didn't really get inside the characters very well. Just not very artfully crafted.

What's going on here? Just a show long past its prime? Time to write it off? Or do they just need to fire some nitwit and bring in a new team to replace the failed new team?

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.

I tivo Charlie Rose every day. I don't always get to them right away. I use them as radio--while I cook breakfast, clean up, exercise . . .

The great joy of that show is the incredible breadth of ideas and perspectives you hear. I tend to get the most out of the various sorts of artists he has on the show, though those are people I can often hear elsewhere, just not in such depth. (Outside of Fresh Air, the other great source.)

But weeks like this are always special, when most of the world leaders are in NY for the UN assembly, and so many of them stop by his studio for a chat. (It kinda started midweek and will continue through much of next week, if he follows his past pattern.)

In general, politicians are the least interesting guests on his show, but he either culls out the few who are not full of hot air, or perhaps they're not windbags when they're not talking to a domestic audience. These people aren't running for anything here. They do have an agenda with the American public, of course, but most of the ones he has on are smart enough to know they're going to impress us a lot more if they leave the BS at home and just talk candidly. (Or am I just used to American politicians--have they not gotten so slick and full of shit everywhere else?)

It can also be a tough week, because you have to deal with a lot of accents--tougher if you're in the kitchen cooking and trying to listen with one ear and one brain hemisphere, and sometimes the ideas sound a little foreign . . . it's a little more work, but usually worth it.

Tonight, was pure pleasure. The President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a woman I'd never heard of--OK, I didn't even know they had elected a woman, I'm embarassed to admit--was something of a revelation. What an incredibly intelligent person. And such a wise, thoughtful take on everything. She had been tortured by Pinochet's goons, and her father, a general, had been murdered by them, but she spoke about it without anger. She spoke of the horrible anger she'd had in the past, but it was clear from her demeanor that it really was gone.

I think she was most refreshing the way she talked about issues passionately, but with none of the us/them mentality we have in our politics now. In fact, she talked about her frustration reading our press, which she sees as still speaking in a Cold War vocabulary, about good guys and bad guys in her region. She sees those countries struggling to enact economic reforms that will build their economies in the long run, but also improve people's lives, and how difficult that balance is, and how everyone is looking for the right answers. Essentially, she says that there are a lot of well-meaning people trying different approaches down there, and for us to split them down the middle and slap half of them with the goodguy label and half badguy is ludicrous, yet we do it with barely a thought.

She had a lot to say. I can't convey more than a fraction of it, but I'm the richer for having been exposed to her. I can't wait for the rest of the week.

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.

OK, maybe I get the situation after all.

For years, I've been flumoxed about the pathetic state of network news: not what's wrong with it, but why the net execs don't get what's wrong with it.

They are well aware that something is wrong. Ratings have declined rapidly for several years, and the story is monumentally worse demographically. The average age for the nightly network newscasts is now something like 60, which barely even seems possible. (Median age of 60 would be bad enough, but average? That means for every 20 year-old watching, there are three 80 year-olds, or six 70 year-olds. Unbelievable. The number of young adults watching is trending toward zero.

That's a huge problem for the nets now--because advertisers don't pay much for old folks--and a life or death problem for them in the medium run, because as Les Moonves admitted in so many words last night on Charlie Rose, those viewers are going to be dying off, and if we don't attract some young ones, it's over.

That viewing pattern seems pretty obvious: old people who grew up with decent news shows established a lifelong habit and many continue. Younger people with other options who tune in are repulsed by what they see and choose not to watch.

So what's the problem with the shows? It seems so freaking obvious, yet they've tried a million different fixes and they never seem to address the obvious one: they're shitty storytellers. I mean, really shitty. I only check in occasionally these days--like yes, I did check Katie Couric out, and she was fine, better than fine, actually, I think she's really good. And they tried to change the show surrounding her, making it magaziney, more feature pieces and all that, but that didn't do diddly, because it's these same retched cliche-ridden pieces that tell us almost nothing, but in a magazine format. And it really doesn't matter how wonderful Katie is introducing all this crap; at some point we still have to watch the crap, and why would we?

The correspondents just seem to rely on all the same tired lines night after night, stringing together lame conventional wisdom and expressing it with a string of cliches, but worst of all, they try so hard to make it cute, or sometimes to make it cool, or sometimes funny--none of which 90% of them have any talent at. And most nauseating of all, they feel this perpetual need to tie every freaking story up with a little bow: a final line or series of lines that "puts it all in perspective," or some such twaddle, like ". . . in one small town, they are learning never to forget -- but sometimes not to remember either" or some horrible reach to sound profound or something.

For me, the defining moment of modern news was--I hate to say this, but it really was 9/11. But not in the sense that it was a watershed event or it was so important that it changed our world or blah blah blah with that nonsense. I mean that for about 24 hours, they QUIT trying to be so damn profound or cute or . . . over-produced, I guess. There was no title to the tragedy yet, and no theme music. Those are obvious hallmarks, but those are just the symptoms. What was really different, was that nobody tried to do these damn packed "stories"--they just said what the hell was happening. It was wonderful. They stopped doing the gross shit they normally do and just spoke candidly about what was happening, what they had learned, what they were finding out. No wannabee-profound bows at the end, just stripped away to no nonsense reporting. And to my utter amazement, they were really good at it.

I actually dreamed, briefly, that they would both notice the difference, and notice that it was actually much better than when they were trying to hard--or when they just didn't have the time to package it.

For a long time I thought the problem was that they were just pretty shitty storytellers, and I couldn't get why the editors or execs or whomever could not see that. (Although I wonder how much of the problem is that the "anchors" got way too much power. Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings were all made the top editors of their shows, as well. That's almost always a problem. If the people writing or creating are the same people editing--I think that fails to grasp the concept of what an editor is: someone standing a few steps outside the creation-process, who can more objectively assess, and tell you when it's not working.)

But still, why couldn't someone--say, Les Moonves--not see the problem of shitty storytelling and just tell them.

And then I saw him on Charlie Rose, addressing it, and saying off-handedly once again that the key to the news is just like sports or fiction or movies or whatever: great storytelling. And it dawned on me suddenly that he gets that, but maybe doesn't get that they're trying too hard. Maybe the format of three-minutes of spoken word is hard to tell much of a story, and/or the correspondents aren't that good at it, and they're trying to tell a beginning middle and end to something without the space to do that, and so they are getting these incredibly hokey attempts. They're OVERtelling it. They're trying to end every freaking piece with some brilliant capper line like it's the great american novel--and by the way, not noticing that most great novels don't end with thundering profundity lines--and they're screwing up by pushing the storytelling thing too hard and just producing really shitty ones.

Maybe someone just needs to tell them, "Look. It doesn't need to be clever. It doesn't need to be cute. It doesn't need a bunch of yucks--and by the way, you're not actually a comedian. It doesn't need to be revelatory every time. Just let it be what it is, tell it like it is, don't try to make it intense or dramatic or solemn or A Lesson. Just tell the freaking story naturally. Quit trying to jazz everything up."

I get the sense that they have gotten the message that it's about great storytelling, so they're overtelling every story, the first instinct to really bad writing. Somebody please tell them to stop.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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"?)

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.