smoking smoking smoking smoking

I’m six episodes into the first season of Mad Men and loving it. There’s a lot to write about, but I’m not going to start quite yet.

Suffice it to say that I’ve never really considered smoking in my living room until now. It won’t happen,  but it’s damn tempting.

Confessions of an Older, Wiser Version of a Hyper-emotional College Student

I was listening to my old band’s record today at work. It’d been a while since I listened to the songs, and even longer since I paid any attention to the lyrics. I thought suddenly that whoever wrote these lyrics must have been a moody, passionate, angry, delusional, pampered-yet-still-demanding, wet-behind-the-ears college student.

I remember being extremely proud (and protective (ok fine, defensive)) of my lyrics. I would work on them in class, at home, at work. I would steal lyrics from other songwriters that I admired. I would ask people to comment/critique them, and then blast them when I disagreed. And I always disagreed. Always.

I loved writing song lyrics back then. I thought it’s what I did best, and back then it probably was. And I think I was more passionate about songwriting—more serious about it, at least—than I am about songwriting now. to be sure, my new songs aren’t lacking honesty, but they’re definitely not as emotionally draining to listen to as the songs from the emo era.

I’m still proud of them, although I view some of them with more than a little regret; they are like a first tattoo, extremely earnest but ultimately a little silly.

Anyway, here are some choice nuggets of 20-year old wisdom:

• “Has it been so long since every word meant everything that we thought we might lose?”

Editor’s note:I’m not even sure how to parse this one myself, so don’t even try.

• “And now, if I had the chance to take it back, I’d take it back, from the first word forward…”

• “It’s a long drive home, and when everyone’s asleep we’re left alone to think how

• we only have the insult and the injury to share.”

• “If i counted all my sins, i’d find too many to forgive…”

At that point, I considered not recycling a sin. Or not giving a cigarette to someone who asked for one.

• “It’s times like these that make us aim for the throat and fight to the bone.”

The only fight I’ve ever been in was years later, and I got my ass kicked.

• “I want to scream “this is the urgency!”, and with our voices clear as church bells, like heaven’s choir of angels, I want to sing, and swear it on my knees: we cannot be born again, we just commit our crimes and hope that we forget.”

Note the mixed metaphor. Oh, why did I reference heaven’s angels when suggesting that heaven doesn’t exist?

• “It’s 5 A.M. when we pull over at the edge of the everglades— where the sun first hits the southern states…”

Slight scientific inaccuracy there; the sun doesn’t hit the southern part of anything first…particularly not west Florida.

• “Who we are is only what we fight for.”

Actually, I’m still fond of that one.

Robot E. Lee revisited

How do you make a perfect idea better? 

With all due respect to Phil’s outline, I’ve reworked the original Robot E. Lee into what I feel is a more complete vision of the same idea. One act at a time.  Here we go.

Act 1:

Three billion years ago, an robotic war machine built by a now-extant alien species crash landed on Earth. The continent had not yet formed. Flora and fauna as we now had not yet evolved. The alien pod containing the robot is covered by the restlessly transforming Earth, and is forgotten. 

Two billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty years later, the pod is unearthed in a massive arsonous explosion in the armory of a Confederate military outpost in western Virginia.

General Robert E. Lee, Virginian by birth, Confederate by choice, has just routed the Union forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville. His men in the Army of Northern Virginia are gaining momentum; they are proud, eager to fight, hungry to win. Another battle like Chancellorsville, he reasons, will irreparably set the tide of the war in their favor, ending the conflict, and hopefully bring peace between the two nations. 

A lone officer rides into Lee’s camp, carrying a single, baffling message:

General Lee,  
The attack on our armory may turn out to be a blessing for our men and for our country, for from the crater we have excavated a strange machine—one not of American making, surely. I believe it will be of great use in our current struggle, and urge you to come inspect it.

Signed,
Lieutenant Colonel Frederick W. Harmon

Lee rides to Roanoke under cover of night, leaving command of his men with his most trusted Colonel. What he finds there will ultimately change him, the war, and the course of history.

Season 2, The Wire

So, I intended to write a series of posts on season 1 of The Wire. I really did. And then I watched all of season 2. 

A few thoughts:

If any other show had abandoned its main storyline after the first season, they’d be screwed. They spend 13 hours developing these great characters, characters that you care about, and identify with, and fear for, and then consign them to the C plot. It was frustrating, even for me, and I knew that the rest would be great. If this was on its first airing, I’m not sure I would stick around. No scratch that, I would, but I’d be very very apprehensive. 

That said, it’s incredible that the writers were able to maintain such distinct storylines throughout the season. The threads that connect the storylines—Avon and D’Angelo in jail through Stringer, Stringer through Prop Joe, to the Greek, to Nick and the longshoremen, and finally to the cops. And we don’t even the Prop Joe connection until the last quarter of the season. It’s amazing that we’re getting 10 minutes(!) of the Barksdale organization a week, and we still tune in. Kudos to the writers and to David Simon for making us care enough to be patient.

The fact is, now that the second season is over, I’m glad they took the drug trade narrative off the front shelf. 

1.) I think it would have exhausted the characters, especially with Avon and D’Angelo in jail. We’ve all seen shows where the principal characters are stuck in one location (Kate/Sawyer in the cage, for example)  for too long, and we get sick of it. 
2.) If season 1 was about establishing the reality of the drug trade in Baltimore, then season 2 was about change. It’s about gentrification pushing out working families, it’s about longshoremen not getting enough hours, it’s about the concessions that drug dealers make to keep their business moving. It’s about how groups evolve when they’re threatened. It would have been hard to achieve that theme without changing the principal storyline.
3.) I think the Nick character was a necessary addition. I’ll get to that later.

lessons learned from The Wire: part 1

A lot of due has been paid to The Wire for representing both sides of the drug war. I think the praise has been warranted, but I haven’t seen a good analysis of how this symmetry is achieved. Why do we care as much about drug dealers as we do about detectives (and why are the despicable cops somehow fouler than the vilest criminal)? How are the magnificent yet subtle structures of this symmetry revealed? This is going to be the main theme of my Season 1: The Wire posts. First off…

1.) Parallel teams.

It’s such a simple thing, such an obviously important thing, but it goes unnoticed and unadvertised in the show: the two teams are perfectly matched.  In skills, in emotions, in mental facilities, in subconscious motivation, the detectives match the Barksdale organization.

The two main powers on the Barksdale side, Avon and Stringer Bell, are very different people. Avon is hot-headed, but shrewd. Stringer is cerebral, cold, cunning. The heart and the brain. This configuration is perfectly matched by McNulty and Lester. McNulty leads with his instincts, which have seemingly lead him to the case. We don’t know much about his previous case assignments, or even all that much about his personal life. He’s good in the field, talking to people, and learning. The personal things we do know from season 1 (divorced, cheated with ADA, loves kids, alcoholic) would have been disclosed in the first episode of any other crime drama. Lester, on the other hand, has been an unused brain for the past thirteen years. He doesn’t go out in the field. He talks, thinks, manipulates. He’s not a perfect analogue to Stringer (Stringer is too much muscle), but he performs the same role in the team.

D’Angelo and Greggs line up to a certain degree, but far less closely. They’re both ambitious, headstrong, hardworking, and secretly scared. They both feel forced to hide things from their associates: D hides his insecurity and his desire to leave the game, while Greggs hides her tenderness. They don’t quite perform the same role structurally, but they feel very similar. Maybe it’s just me, but they both have a “little sibling that just grew up and is trying to prove themselves” sort of personality.

More to come.

lessons learned from the wire: prologue

i’m almost done with season 1, and i’m planning a couple of thoughtful posts in conjunction with the milestone. there’s one particular point that i want to make now; there’ll be examples and comparisons later, but for now…

don’t give more backstory than is absolutely necessary. moreover, don’t follow your characters home more often than is absolutely necessary. more isn’t better. no show does this better than the wire.

we’ve followed greggs home just enough to care about her and to know her partner. they didn’t bludgeon us with her homosexuality (or at least, not as much as they could have), and we didn’t get any lady-cop-is-totally-scared-and-girly-when-not-in-uniform cliches. we got an accurate, adequate portrayal of her character through her life as it is involved with the story. not much more than that. we didn’t see the inside of greggs, because we don’t have to.

30 rock season 3 on netflix view instant

Thank god.

The constant stream of guest stars is a little irritating though. Megan Mullaly! Steve Martin! Jennifer Anistan! Goodness gracious!

The fact is, the regular characters, when they’re written well, are much funnier than the guest stars. And as much as I like having seeing Matthew Broderick on the small screen, it’s more a distraction than anything else. To put it lamely, we tune in to listen to Jack, Liz, et al., not Alan Alda.