Thursday night was the end of an era, that era being the 2009-2010 television season. Although there are other shows with new episodes left this season, since I only watch TV on Thursday nights and only watch four shows on that night, this was the last night of the season for me.
Thursdays on NBC have been the most consistent two hours of programming I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy. The Community/Parks and Rec/The Office/30 Rock comedy powerhouse has been a joy to behold since September.
This season saw the beginning of Community, a show I really enjoy and hopefully will continue to enjoy for seasons to come (but realize it will probably hit a slump about halfway through next season, kind of like it did this season). The paintball episode is one of the finest half hours of television I've ever seen.
Parks and Rec went from being a show I kind of hated for being a lazy rehash of The Office, from the people who made The Office, to being a show I genuinely like more than I like the Office, which I do like, deep down inside, if only because I hate it so much.
The Office didn't entirely suck this season. In fact, I liked a lot of the episodes. This season also featured two of the worst episodes in The Office history; the wedding episode and the episode where Pam and Jim have a baby. Are people over The Office? Do people still like it? I think I might have started liking it again, which due to my anitpopulist nature, probably means it's becoming unpopular. Next season seriously needs to be the last season.
And finally 30 Rock. Oh 30 Rock, what can I say? 30 Rock was once the next Arrested Development. It's first season is probably the second best first season of any television show I've seen ("Tracy Does Conan" being in my top five best episodes of a television ever), then the writers strike happened and there was that epsiode that ended with the musical number. The beginning of the third season was pretty weak, but the back half brought it hard and salvaged a lackluster year. The then the fourth season happened. 30 Rock stopped being a show about people making a TV show. It became a show about a ruthless executive, his lovable protege and their pet, an annoying toeheaded creepster named Kenneth. It lost its grounding as an ensemble show with two bright stars, and around that time the jokes just started falling flat. There are still some good episodes in the fourth season, but compared to it's peak, 30 Rock was pound for pound the weakest link on the Thursday night chain of comedy awesomeness (which is what NBC should start calling their Thursday night lineup. It's much catchier than Must See TV).
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Character Development
I've recently discovered something about myself... well not really discovered but more of found a way to describe something that I've known about myself for years. I have a tendency to like people I shouldn't like, and when I say "like" I mean enjoy on a purely superficial level. I've always had an affinity for curmudgeony people, people who are by their very nature unlikeable, people who are rude to me, or are arrogant jackasses, or are pretentious douchebags. Generally speaking, I like people.
This might be surprising considering I like to call myself a misanthrope, but hypocrisy has always been one of my most defining characteristics (in addition to my remarkable candor, my almost constant self-deprecation and incredible sense of direction). But as I stated earlier, I've figured out why I like people I shouldn't like (and dislike people I shouldn't, to some extent). I view other people a lot like I view characters in TV shows and movies. I don't judge them based on how I feel about them personally or how they relate to me, I judge them based on what they add to the world around them.
So here's a for instance; My boss and I don't really get along. We aren't adversarial to each other, I think we both like each other well enough, but we have nothing in common. We are completely different types of people. If we are alone in a room together we don't talk. We have nothing to talk about. Very little in common except for the fact that we both work in the same 50' by 10' box. However, if Jackson Wal-mart Pharmacy was a TV show, Keith, my boss, would be my favorite character. He has great rapport with pretty much every other person that comes into the pharmacy. He's funny and engaging and very three dimensional. He's a great character.
I've pretty much always viewed my life as a movie, and I've never considered myself to be the hero, which might sound kind of like a passive aggressive attempt for sympathy, but it isn't. The hero is rarely, if ever, the best part of a movie; Han Solo is way cooler than Luke Skywalker, Frodo is the worst part of Lord of the Rings, Sonny and Vito are both cooler than Michael (especially if we're counting all three Godfather movies, which I am) and Chaucer steals every scene form William Thatcher (Knight's Tale reference bitches!) (DOUBLE ASIDE!: RDJ might be the exception to this rule, Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes and that dude he plays in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are all pretty much the best parts of their respective movies, also Harrison Ford is pretty good as Indiana Jones... but other than that... and Joe Go Lev, but of the four movies I've seen with him as the lead, he only carried two of them...no, I stand by my original statement. RDJ is the only exception.).
So I guess my big revelation is that I like real people for much the same reason I like fake people, which is why sometimes I like people who are complete douche-bags, and dislike people who are completely fine people (I can't think of anyone like this at the moment but I'm sure there are plenty of people like this that I've met). Not too surprising I guess.
In other news, I still can not figure out how to get songs from my computer onto my I-pod. Fuck you apple, and your proprietary software.
Oh! I just thought of someone I hate that I hate for no reason! Anyone who owns an i-pad. I-pad owners are all douche-bags beyond salvation. That is all.
This might be surprising considering I like to call myself a misanthrope, but hypocrisy has always been one of my most defining characteristics (in addition to my remarkable candor, my almost constant self-deprecation and incredible sense of direction). But as I stated earlier, I've figured out why I like people I shouldn't like (and dislike people I shouldn't, to some extent). I view other people a lot like I view characters in TV shows and movies. I don't judge them based on how I feel about them personally or how they relate to me, I judge them based on what they add to the world around them.
So here's a for instance; My boss and I don't really get along. We aren't adversarial to each other, I think we both like each other well enough, but we have nothing in common. We are completely different types of people. If we are alone in a room together we don't talk. We have nothing to talk about. Very little in common except for the fact that we both work in the same 50' by 10' box. However, if Jackson Wal-mart Pharmacy was a TV show, Keith, my boss, would be my favorite character. He has great rapport with pretty much every other person that comes into the pharmacy. He's funny and engaging and very three dimensional. He's a great character.
I've pretty much always viewed my life as a movie, and I've never considered myself to be the hero, which might sound kind of like a passive aggressive attempt for sympathy, but it isn't. The hero is rarely, if ever, the best part of a movie; Han Solo is way cooler than Luke Skywalker, Frodo is the worst part of Lord of the Rings, Sonny and Vito are both cooler than Michael (especially if we're counting all three Godfather movies, which I am) and Chaucer steals every scene form William Thatcher (Knight's Tale reference bitches!) (DOUBLE ASIDE!: RDJ might be the exception to this rule, Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes and that dude he plays in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are all pretty much the best parts of their respective movies, also Harrison Ford is pretty good as Indiana Jones... but other than that... and Joe Go Lev, but of the four movies I've seen with him as the lead, he only carried two of them...no, I stand by my original statement. RDJ is the only exception.).
So I guess my big revelation is that I like real people for much the same reason I like fake people, which is why sometimes I like people who are complete douche-bags, and dislike people who are completely fine people (I can't think of anyone like this at the moment but I'm sure there are plenty of people like this that I've met). Not too surprising I guess.
In other news, I still can not figure out how to get songs from my computer onto my I-pod. Fuck you apple, and your proprietary software.
Oh! I just thought of someone I hate that I hate for no reason! Anyone who owns an i-pad. I-pad owners are all douche-bags beyond salvation. That is all.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Gentlemen Broncos: Perhaps the Worst Movie I've ever Seen
I've seen a lot of bad movies; Pirate Radio, For Your Consideration, Cloverfield, The Order, Angels and Demons... and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I'm not the kind of person that watches bad movies on purpose (usually), and I'm usually kinder on movies that are bad movies by their very nature. I don't go into movies like "Megasnake" or "From Paris With Love" thinking I'm about to see something outstanding. But when movies that have a certain pedigree turn out to be awful, I am ruthless to them. Such is the case for a film called Gentlemen Broncos.
Gentlemen Broncos is the third feature from the auteur Jared Hess. His previous outings, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, were both competent if not outstanding films. Gentlemen Broncos, however, is a pointless, ambling mess of a film. It is a tedious, grueling display of some of the most unpleasant characters to ever be put on film. There is no redeeming part of this film. I watched it because I like Sam Rockwell and Jermaine Clement. It is not worth it. Their additions to the film are too fleeting and too weird to be entertaining, and really, their presences aren't that fleeting, they just don't have anything to work with, and as such, when they're onscreen, I just wanted them to get off, because the movie was so terrible. . There is no humor in this movie. There is nothing pleasant about this film at all. Please, whatever you do, do not see this movie.
Iron Man 2 is pretty good though. Not as good as the first one, but still very good.
Gentlemen Broncos is the third feature from the auteur Jared Hess. His previous outings, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, were both competent if not outstanding films. Gentlemen Broncos, however, is a pointless, ambling mess of a film. It is a tedious, grueling display of some of the most unpleasant characters to ever be put on film. There is no redeeming part of this film. I watched it because I like Sam Rockwell and Jermaine Clement. It is not worth it. Their additions to the film are too fleeting and too weird to be entertaining, and really, their presences aren't that fleeting, they just don't have anything to work with, and as such, when they're onscreen, I just wanted them to get off, because the movie was so terrible. . There is no humor in this movie. There is nothing pleasant about this film at all. Please, whatever you do, do not see this movie.
Iron Man 2 is pretty good though. Not as good as the first one, but still very good.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Maybe it's not completely unjustified...
A few years ago, I was introduced to a television show called "Firefly". I loved it wholesale. It was a space western, with an incredible cast and a great story and it was more or less my introduction to Joss Whedon. In edition to creating Firefly, Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse, Joss Whedon also wrote a run of Astonishing X-men that came out around the time I was getting into Firefly. I picked up the first two trades and kind of hated them. I hated them so much that I thought that my love for "Firefly" might have been undeserved, that "Firefly" might actually suck and I was just remembering it to be good (like most things I liked when I was a child and Kevin Smith movies). So I spent a year or so thinking that I might not actually like "Firefly", but when I watched it all again last summer I realized it was legitimately good. This led me to think that I might've been too hard on Whedon's X-men run, so I gave it another try and borrowed the two books of his run I hadn't read from Mason. They were still terrible.
Whedon's X-men is terrible for a lot of reason, but the thing that bothered me the most about it was how he would end scenes. Almost every scene in the book was ended right before some sort of big reveal or a character getting shot or something that is supposed to be suspenseful, but really just comes off as annoying (Dan Brown employs this technique, or at least he did in the first 45 or so pages of Angels and Demons, which is about as far as I got in the book when I realized that it was not going to get better). Also I didn't like how he wrote Kitty Pryde. Which is weird because I've never read any X-men books with Kitty Pryde, ever. I have no affinity for the character whatsoever, and yet, I felt that the words coming out of her mouth were an insult to her character. So those things and the almost Pirates of the Caribbean levels of backstabbing and deal making were a little much.
So I think Firefly might be the only Whedon property that doesn't annoy me, which is a shame because he's doing the Avenger's movie, and I really like the Avengers and I think he's going to screw them up.
Whedon's X-men is terrible for a lot of reason, but the thing that bothered me the most about it was how he would end scenes. Almost every scene in the book was ended right before some sort of big reveal or a character getting shot or something that is supposed to be suspenseful, but really just comes off as annoying (Dan Brown employs this technique, or at least he did in the first 45 or so pages of Angels and Demons, which is about as far as I got in the book when I realized that it was not going to get better). Also I didn't like how he wrote Kitty Pryde. Which is weird because I've never read any X-men books with Kitty Pryde, ever. I have no affinity for the character whatsoever, and yet, I felt that the words coming out of her mouth were an insult to her character. So those things and the almost Pirates of the Caribbean levels of backstabbing and deal making were a little much.
So I think Firefly might be the only Whedon property that doesn't annoy me, which is a shame because he's doing the Avenger's movie, and I really like the Avengers and I think he's going to screw them up.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
I hope they aren't becoming a thing
There is a band called Avi Buffalo. They are sort of unpleasant to listen to. I think they might be becoming indie music darlings. I do not dig them.
As much as I hate to admit it, I am a hispter... sort of. I certainly love irony and "indie" music enough, but there are certain things that hispters are supposed to like that I don't much care for. Musically, the list would include Radiohead (which I think non-hipsters are supposed to like too), Bon Iver, Phoenix, and all "good rap". I think my taste in movies might exclude me from hipster status, (although I think the hipster do's and don'ts of film are a bit more nebulous than their musical requirements) and if that doesn't my dislike of coffee, tea and alcohol of any kind certainly would. My most telling quality that might qualify me for hipsterdom is my hatred of hipsters. That is probably a hipster's most defining characteristic. Hipsters can not stand other hipsters. They hate their pretentiousness and their smugness and their aloofness. I might be safe from hipsterdom though, because I think I might just be a misanthrope, and just have a special place in my heart for hating people who think they're better than everyone else.
Whatever label other people ascribe to me, one thing's for sure. I really do not like Avi Buffalo.
As much as I hate to admit it, I am a hispter... sort of. I certainly love irony and "indie" music enough, but there are certain things that hispters are supposed to like that I don't much care for. Musically, the list would include Radiohead (which I think non-hipsters are supposed to like too), Bon Iver, Phoenix, and all "good rap". I think my taste in movies might exclude me from hipster status, (although I think the hipster do's and don'ts of film are a bit more nebulous than their musical requirements) and if that doesn't my dislike of coffee, tea and alcohol of any kind certainly would. My most telling quality that might qualify me for hipsterdom is my hatred of hipsters. That is probably a hipster's most defining characteristic. Hipsters can not stand other hipsters. They hate their pretentiousness and their smugness and their aloofness. I might be safe from hipsterdom though, because I think I might just be a misanthrope, and just have a special place in my heart for hating people who think they're better than everyone else.
Whatever label other people ascribe to me, one thing's for sure. I really do not like Avi Buffalo.
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