30 Day TV Challenge - Day 5: "There's coffee in that nebula."

5. A show you hate.

Again, I bet you're really surprised.

There's no getting around it, kids: Star Trek: Voyager was a wretched, wretched television show. They made 168 episodes of this thing, and out of them maybe -- maybe -- ten are what I would call "good." This is not a show that started well and went off the rails; it wasn't marred by executive meddling; it didn't lose a powerful creative voice midway through its run and suffered from the vacancy. It set up all its dominoes from the start, gave itself lots of fascinating directions to move and a whole galaxy to explore, and then chose wrong for every single decision. For seven years.

The premise is pretty solid -- a Federation ship gets blasted across the galaxy by a Mysterious Godlike Being*, then has to make the long, 70000 light year trip home alone. A thousand possibilities! Think of the endless universe they had to work with: they bragged that the completely new setting would allow them to really shake things up, leave behind all those tired villains everyone was bored with. (Which they really did leave behind for, um, seven whole episodes.) The unexplored Delta Quadrant would let the franchise return to its roots, a show about exploration and testing the limits of humanity. So why did everyone seem so bored? The characters, I mean, not just the audience? And why did it all feel so...the same?

Interesting concepts are introduced, then either abandoned or botched completely. The tension between the Federation officers and the Maquis freedom fighters, forced to work and live side-by-side? I think it came up three times. The idea that the ship had limited resources to use and had to make do with what they had? The only one who seemed to bring that up was Neelix, the ship's resident annoying goofball, and it was only a handful.

But hey, that's fine -- you want to write boring, fallow characters, that's your business. But Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (the show's creators and creative voices) took it a step further and gutted Star Trek**. The Borg, the Maquis, the Q -- classic Trek creations that made their way to Voyager, and all of them marred beyond recognition. Which shouldn't surprise anyone: Braga made no bones about this indifference toward the franchise's continuity, and pretty did whatever he wanted. Why he wanted to do this, no one knows.

The show is infamous for its most well-worn storytelling device, the dread Reset Button ending. I know how quickly I got tired of the "We have to go back in time to save the ship from being destroyed" story line, but thought it was a crutch they developed in later seasons; I was mildly surprised to do some research and discover this was the crux of the third episode of the series. But when presented with Star Trek's most obvious chance to do some real, deep character work, to actually tell a coherent story with characters who changed and grew, they did the opposite: sitcom writing in space. A problem popped up, they solved it in 44 minutes, and everything went back exactly as it was -- very often, literally exactly as it was, thanks to time travel.

I watched...so many episodes of Voyager. I'm a Trekkie die hard, no question. And I was waiting for it to be good. Because, hey, Next Gen struggled at the beginning, didn't it? Surely Voyager will improve! But no. It never did. In fact, it got worse. And by the time it finally limped to its half-assed, laughable conclusion, Star Trek had been dealt a grievous wound. I'm not sure it will ever really recover.

*Which was just laziness. The original Trek started with Mysterious Godlike Beings; Next Gen started with Mysterious Godlike Beings; DS9 started with Mysterious Godlike Beings. Voyager couldn't get out of its goddamn pitch meeting without being a boring retread.
**They would later create Enterprise, a show so vapid and dull that it's actually difficult to hate. I guess after gutting the corpse, they wanted to piss on its grave. (Braga, incidentally, would also destroy the 24 series. So it's not just Trek he hates.)

Synchronicity

So last night I wrote that endless essay on Lost (one of several to come, of course), and then I come across an article on the new Weezer album, set to disappoint us next month.

Now, I've talked about Weezer before, more than once. Short version: I love their first two albums like best friends, but find their output since frustrating, inconsistent and boring. (BOCTAOE.) But one thing I do like about post-Pinkerton Weezer is Rivers Cuomo's refusal to take the band's image seriously. Here, take a look at the cover of 2008's self-titled "red album":

And then, their (wretchedly awful) 2009 release, Raditude:

I love those covers. They're funny, even if the music they represent is not so great.

So last week, Weezer announces the title of their new record, Hurley. Yes, like Hurley from Lost. And everyone's like, "Huh huh, they should just put a picture of Jorge Garcia on the cover, heh heh."

So they did.

That's it. That's the cover of Hurley, Weezer's eighth album. Not even any words, not the band name, nothing. Just Hurley. Hurley.

And I would think they were making fun of Jorge, except (a) they're not mean people, and (b) I'm pretty sure Jorge and Rivers are friends. As seen in this photo...

...which is, of course, where they cropped Jorge's face for the cover.

I really don't know what to make of it, honestly. Is it joke? Is it a tribute? Is it brilliant? Is it lazy?

You tell me.

(Credit: The A.V. Club.)

30 Day TV Challenge - Day 4: "It only ends once. Everything that comes before is just progress."

4. Your favorite show ever.

You're shocked, I'm sure.

(How about we try to get through this without spoilers?)

I've talked about it incessantly. I've written about it incessantly. Some part of me -- the part that likes to be unpredictable -- thought about tossing a curveball here and not going with the painfully obvious, but who are we kidding? The prompt is blunt and to the point, and so I should be: Lost is my favorite show ever. And since a number of these prompts ask you to write about your favorite show -- I'm counting five or six appearances for Lost over the next thirty days -- you should buckle up.

Trying to summarize Lost comes across as stupid, really, because reducing it to its barest essentials -- "It's about the survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island" -- misses the point entirely. Lost is a show about the power and fragility of faith, the lure of the mysterious, the importance of learning from our mistakes so not to repeat them, guilt and redemption, the meaning of life and death, the collision of the spiritual mind and the scientific, whether people -- on their own or as a society -- are capable of rising above their selfish and vain interests and working for good, and the nature of good and evil (and how maybe they're not as different as we think). Lost is about taking a step back from our narrow perspective and seeing our place on the timeline of history -- all that came before us, and all that will come after us. That everything matters, whether we know it or understand it, and that each and every choice we make, each and every person we meet, affects the rest of our lives and the lives of others in ways we are often unable to comprehend. It was about everything.

And the survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island. Also: polar bears.

Lost is incredible enough on its own, of course: six magnificent seasons of gripping, revolutionary television. But it's more than that to me -- the community that sprang up around the show was almost as much fun. The fan-created podcasts (I'm a Jay and Jack Podcast fan, myself), the endless message boards, the three-thousand word essays dissecting forty-second scenes from four-year-old episodes -- the show felt alive, somehow, a growing entity that spread beyond the hour a week it aired. And unlike Star Trek, which I always felt kept its fans at arm's length*, the creators of Lost fully embraced that community, welcoming it and adding to it, giving fans a wonderful give-and-take that only endeared us to them more. They gave us elaborate panels and sketches at conventions, they gave us internet-only episodes, they published tie-in novels and video games -- hell, even the official jigsaw puzzles were canonical.

Of course, I'm this far in and I haven't really explained why I liked it so much. And that's because I can't. Which is not to say it's a mystery; it's to say that every answer to that question feels incomplete. I loved everything about this show -- even when it screwed up, it screwed up in a way that was fascinating, somehow. I loved the writing, I loved the characters and the actors, I loved the directing and the music, I loved the fluid nature of the storytelling and the way the show insisted on defying convention and expectation at every turn. I loved the way it confronted the Big Questions about life, the universe and everything; but I also loved the way it examined the smaller problems, the problems we all have in life. It's pretty hard to believe one could look at a story filled with Smoke Monsters and magical islands and say, "I can relate to that," but that's what Lost did.

And, finally: it was just flat-out entertaining. The mysteries were dense (some would say obtuse), but I never really got that sinking X-Files feeling, the feeling that the writers had climbed up their own asses and lost the way. (I almost got that feeling. Once. For a week during the third season, between the episodes "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," I got worried. But it passed. And I was rewarded.) I've loved a lot of shows, but none have made the impact that Lost did on me, and I doubt any show will do it again. It changed the way I look at television -- I have a feeling I'll be looking for a show to effect me on all levels like Lost did for a long, long time.

I feel, somehow, that I need to defend the show -- the internet turned on it, and turned hard, towards the end, and its final episode unleashed an ocean of hate. I know the endless cries of "They left so much unanswered," and I could respond. I could tell you that, in fact, almost nothing was left (entirely) unexplained, and the gaps in the story had far more to do with the unfortunate realities of creating a television series than they did with poor writing or bad choices. But I won't -- I don't think Lost needs a defender. Because the show speaks for itself. Like any epic story worth the time, it rewards the patient and the observant. The central conflict of the show for most of its run was that of Faith vs. Reason, and in the end, the show came down on the side of...neither. The world is what you make of it, however you choose to engage it, and you just have to try to do the best you can. As it is with Lost: if you want to devour each episode and break down all of the clues and hints and foreshadowing and references, that's there for you. If you just watch it for the gripping story, that's there for you, too.

It's funny. It's stunning. It's action-packed. It's moving. It's science-fiction. It was romance. It was adventure story. It's buddy comedy. It's tragedy. It's parable. It's methodical. It's spiritual. It's contemplative. It's classic. It's post-modern. It was the last great show of the Old Media; it was the first great show of the New Media.

It was Lost. My favorite show ever.

*By that I don't mean the actors -- I mean the producers and executives, the big-wigs, who always seemed (at least to me, as a young fan) to be dismissive and confused by the Trekkies, and even their attempts to reach out felt unabashedly mercenary. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof hosted an almost-weekly podcast on Lost, inviting and responding directly to fan questions and criticism with honesty, openness and aplomb. I cannot see Brannon Braga or Rick Berman ever doing something like that, can you?

30 Day TV Challenge - Day 3: "9/11 was pretty much the 9/11 of the falafel market."

(This one's a lot shorter, friends -- I spent most of the day completely revamping our living room. New furniture is awesome.)

3. Your favorite new show (that aired this television season).

Community

"Turns out my law degree was not legitimate."
"I thought you had a Bachelor's from Columbia."
"Now I need to get one from America. And it can't be an email attachment."

This was my original pick for day two, but realized then I'd need to write about it two days in a row. So, Leverage got the bump yesterday, and I can give what is easily my favorite new show, Community, the spotlight it deserves.

What can one say about a show as brilliant as Community, that doesn't simply boil down to "You have to watch this show"? It's hilarious, it's poignant, it's smart, it's the most self-reflexive and self-referential program to hit the air since Arrested Development, the cast is spectacular, and it's instantly memorable and forever quotable. And -- I said it once before, but it bears repeating -- it is riotously funny. Even the pilot is a work of beauty, and the episode "Modern Warfare" (pictured above) might be the funniest half-hour of television in the last decade.

Again, it's a simple premise -- a Breakfast Club-style gang of misfits form a Spanish study group at a local community college -- that bears unbelievably deep rewards. Most shows this funny don't bother with engaging the audience emotionally; when they do, it can come off as manipulative, pretentious or even disingenuous. Not Community, which connects you with its characters, despite how ridiculous and far-fetched they might seem on the surface. Even Chevy Chase -- perhaps the personification of impenetrable smugness and distance -- is (something of) a sympathetic guy, despite how cruel and vain he is most of the time?

Of course, I can already see the premature cancellation in the distance: last season, it spent most of its run scheduled against Glee (masterfully skewered in "Modern Warfare," as the gang annihilates the glee club with paintballs); next season, CBS has shifted The Big Bang Theory to take it down. But as long as it's on the air, I'll stick around.

In conclusion: You have to watch this show.

(Also considered for this prompt: Cougar Town. Forget the idiotic title and the first half-dozen or so episodes; once they get bored with the whole "cougar" concept, it becomes a brilliantly funny show.)

Sunday Comics

Philly's own Paul F. Tompkins. You should find your way to the Pod F. Tompkast.

30 Day Television Challenge - Day 2: "Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys."

2. A show you wish more people were watching.

Leverage.
It airs on TNT. You should be watching.

Okay, so maybe I have something of a dog in this hunt: I've been reading the blog of John Rogers, the show's co-creator, for years, and followed Leverage since before it aired. Wil Wheaton and Mark Sheppard, geek heroes both, have recurring roles. Jonathan Frakes -- Commander William F'ing Riker, you guys -- has directed several episodes. Rooting for this show feels like rooting for the home team.

Convenient for me, then, that's it so good. Leverage is, more or less, a television version of one my very favorite film genres: the heist picture. Intricate scripts, funny and compelling characters, and people stealing things -- it's like The Sting: The Series. Only better.

The reason the show works as well as it does -- aside from the fact that it's made by talented people who know what they're doing -- is the wrinkle in its central premise, the wrinkle that separates it from pure heist porn* like Ocean's Eleven. The Leverage team are not thieves -- well, now, okay that's not even close to being right. They're Thieves, all right, but they're not crooks, if that makes any damn sense whatsoever. They're a modern-day band of Merry Men, stealing from the evil and corrupt and returning to the mortal and powerless. The team's leader, Nate Ford, was once an insurance investigator, and watched too many people get ground under by cold corporate steamrollers. So now, they fight from the other side: when an evil corporation strikes, they strike back. Sometimes with explosions, if Dean Devlin is directing that episode.

Even more interesting: the show is a fantasy, but only in the idea of a Leverage team fighting back. The villains? Terrifyingly real. The scripts are exhaustively researched, and it seems the more evil the bad guy, the more he/she is actually based on a real live person doing real live things. When one of them goes down, Leverage takes on a sense of wish-fulfillment you don't get at the end of most heist movies. (This is especially gratifying when the show takes a swing at a low-hanging piñata, like a second-season episode that obliterates a Nancy Grace stand-in.)

Now, Leverage is a hit -- it just began its third season and has already been picked up for a fourth. So why write about it here? Because I told you: I have something of a dog in this hunt. I love this show, and I love all of the people who make it happen. I want them to be superstars.

(Also considered for this prompt: Community.)

*Not that heist porn is bad. Not at all. I love those Ocean's movies.

30 Day Television Challenge - Day 1: "I thought being a private eye was all about shooting dudes and making out with sexy widows."

1. A show that should have never been canceled.

Veronica Mars, canceled in 2007

Well, this is a tricky one. Trickier than you think, actually; the knee-jerk answers aren't actually right. Sure, Arrested Development was cut off at the knees, but its inevitable cancellation led to some of its best episodes in the third season, as they threw all of their rules and morals right out of the window and gave Fox a gigantic middle finger every week. I wouldn't want to have lost those. Firefly? Yeah, maybe. But the network would have picked the show to pieces and ruined it in an effort to get more viewers; really, it was doomed from the start. So instead, I'll go with Veronica Mars, the best detective show I've ever seen.

Veronica got a bad rep right from the start -- it was a high school show, starring a bunch of teenagers, running on the WB. The second episode featured a prominent cameo from Paris Hilton. Not something likely to be taken seriously by anyone. But here's the catch: it was phenomenal. Right out of the gate, it's clear that creator Rob Thomas* has more on his mind than just a silly locker show -- his characters are sharply drawn and fully realized right from the pilot, realistic people with complex motivations. The mysteries are compelling and well-told, and the performances are electrifying. What more could you want?

On the surface, it's something of a simple premise -- Veronica Mars is the daughter of Keith Mars, a private detective. She follows in her father's footsteps and solves cases of her own, most having to do with her fellow students at Neptune High, the unluckiest and most scandal-ridden school since Bayside High. But of course there's more than that -- Keith used to be the sheriff of Neptune, until he was run out of office for (allegedly) bungling a high-profile murder case. That case was the murder of Veronica's best friend, Lily, who was (a) the daughter of the richest, most powerful man in town; (b) the sister of Veronica's boyfriend, Duncan, and (c) the girlfriend of Veronica's perpetual nemesis**, Logan Echolls. The new sheriff quickly made an arrest and got a conviction, putting the whole affair to rest...except for the Marses, who continue to search for evidence of the real culprit. Veronica, meanwhile, has become the outcast of the school: ridiculed for her father's public failure, ostracized for no longer fitting in with the ultra-rich cool kids, and labeled a whore after being drugged and date-raped at a party she crashed.

And that's just the backstory, of course -- the pilot picks up as Veronica and Keith have already fallen from grace, with him picking up bail jumpers to pay the bills while Veronica dodges hate from all sides at school. Veronica's angst-filled voice-overs, the stylistic camerawork, the seedy plot lines -- this isn't just some high school show, it's a film noir for the 21st century. This is especially true in the show's magnificent second season, when the numerous arcs and mysteries are no longer partitioned into separate threads, but blur together in an almost impenetrable soup of lies, deceptions and murders. It's dense, which is a word few would use to describe the overwhelming majority of WB programming. But even beyond the mysteries, underneath the surfers and the sunshine, there's still more dark underbelly; Thomas uses Neptune as a canvas on which to paint a stark commentary on class and race in America, with the rich and white on one side and the poor on the other.

So what happened? Well, low ratings, first of all. Read that description up there, then remember it's the WB we're talking about, and you understand why no one was watching. But then it got worse -- the WB and UPN merged into the CW, and while Veronica Mars came along for the ride, it was with reservations. The new masters demanded changes -- thin out the stories, simplify the plots, shorten the arcs, and pump up the soap opera romance angles. Pump them way up. Despite the lobotomy, the show remained brilliant, but the ratings dropped again, and the CW dropped the ax. For good.

They tried to save it, of course -- fans started the obligatory "save our show!" campaign, sending the CW executives marshmallows (you'd have to watch the show to understand why), and Thomas pitched a radical overhaul, offering to jump the show forward to Veronica's adventures as an FBI agent. But no dice. The deal was done. So, after a frustrating cliffhanger, Veronica Mars was done. There was talk of a movie, but Kristen Bell has moved on to profitable (and shitty) romantic comedies, and the DVD sets haven't made much money, so no one is holding their breath.

The cancellation of Veronica Mars is sad because this show should have succeeded. On another network, in another time slot, with more publicity and less meddling, this My So-Called Life meets The Rockford Files meets The Maltese Falcon masterpiece could have thrived. Instead, it's another television casualty, forgotten and discarded. And that's why it should have never been canceled. Hell, at least Firefly fans got their damn movie.

*Not that Rob Thomas, of course.
**Fans may bristle at me calling Logan Veronica's nemesis. But I'm using "nemesis" here in the Chuck Klosterman sense. Clearly, Logan is her nemesis. Her archenemy, meanwhile, is Madison Sinclair.

The Living Years (or, Surely I Can't Fail at This Assignment, Too)

Happiness writes white.
 - Harvey Danger

There's much more to life than what you see, my friend of misery.
 - Metallica

This blog has been a strange animal.

When I was depressed, there seemed no limit to the topics I'd find for discussion, and no limit to the lengths at which I'd discuss them. In 2007, I posted 237 times, devoting thousands of words to barely-informed political diatribes and ill-temepered, bitter rants against the world at large. One would think this all-consuming depression was the fuel for the fire -- and one would have evidence to support this assumption. After all, the last two years (easily the two best years of my life) have seen little to no blog output whatsoever.

But the six months prior to me suddenly becoming the Happy Evil Genius were an unending parade of awfulness, and that saw even less output. I posted rarely, and when I did post, it would often consist of little more than a YouTube video and a few pithy sentences. So: too depressed means no writing. But no depressed also means no writing.

To be fair, though, I was writing again, and pretty consistently, last year, right up until October. That's when we moved, and we had no internet for a week or so. And my habit of posting -- because that's what it had become, a habit -- was interrupted.

I never got the knack again.

But in the next couple of months, things are changing quite a bit. Our son, Jacob, will be born. (He's due in October, but we get the feeling he's likely to show up whenever he damn well pleases.) This afternoon, I was installing the baby seat in my car, feeling a collision of feelings and memories and emotions, and I thought, I want to write about this.

Trouble is: I'm out of practice.

The parts of my brain that let get the words out is very much like a muscle, and it's out of shape. You can't run a mile without doing some stretches, and you can't run the Boston Marathon without running a whole lot of miles.

So here's the plan: look at this here 30 Day television meme. Each day for thirty days, you answer a prompt. 30 days, 30 posts.

Consider that my training regiment. A month from now, I'll be back in shape and ready to write about important things.

Like this new Arcade Fire record. It's great!

Or, you know, our new son. Whatevs.

The jwalkernet Musical Canon: Part Seven (77-74)

Consider this my invisible post. We'll see if anyone sees it. (I'm posting this because it almost completely written anyway.)

77. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf
This album's loose concept is that it's the songs picked up on the radio of a car headed from Los Angeles to Mexico in the middle of the night. Fitting, then, that most of the tracks barrel forward with single-minded drive and focus. Josh Fromme lives and dies by his robotic, pounding riffs, and he's wise enough to hire drum master Dave Grohl to handle percussion duties. The songs hum and drone with an incessant urgency: "No One Knows," "Go with the Flow" and "First It Giveth" are must-haves for any soundtrack for an endless late-night drive. But they save their best gag for last -- the gorgeous and terrifying "Mosquito Song," parked at the end of the album, the only moment of delicate beauty.

76. The New Pornographers, Electric Version
There are other members of this band -- it's a "supergroup," apparently made of Canadian stars -- but it's really all about Niko Case. Feeling down? Listen to "All for Swinging You Around," and let her voice blast that sadness from every dark corner of your soul. "The Laws Have Changed" is a great song, until Niko comes in and makes it amazing. That's short-changing the rest of the group, obviously, and the fact is that everyone brings their A-game to this, creating a power-pop masterpiece on basically every track. But -- just between you and me -- it's all about Niko.

75. The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute
I guess in addition to being an obsessive completist, I also have an unwavering respect for artists that do exactly what they want to do, no matter what anyone else thinks. Take the Mars Volta -- a group of rational people might try to make their lyrics less obtuse than "She was a mink handjob in sarcophagus heels." Or at least pick just one language to sing those lyrics in. But clearly the Mars Volta are anything other than rational. Their song cycle not only begins in the middle of a song, its title track -- and "key" song -- isn't even on the damn album at all. But the music that is here, songs with impenetrable titles like "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus" and "Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore," is flat-out jaw-dropping. They call this "progressive rock," but Pink Floyd was progressive rock, and there's no way the Floyd could have kept up with this schizophrenic lunacy. Frances the Mute is gargantuan -- the final piece, "Cassandra Gemini," clocks in at over 32 minutes, and features more melodies and themes than most other albums get through in twelve songs. If every band was as fearless as the Mars Volta, the world might be a lot better for it.

74. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
There's a time in one's life when your only cultural knowledge comes from your parents. And then there comes the time when you reject it and find your own way. And then there comes the time when you look back and realize that maybe your parents got it right once in a while. Rumours is an album I loved as a kid, hated as a teenager, and have now fallen back in love with again as an adult. Because, really, there's no denying these songs. "Gold Dust Woman" sounds as fresh and amazing as it did when I was nine, and as it must have sounded when it was released over twenty years ago. "The Chain" is one of the perfect rock songs, starting so sparse and quiet and building to an amazing finish. I don't care who you are or what genre of music you prefer -- everyone can love Rumours. It's okay. Trust me: your mom was right on this one.

Sunday Monday Comics

How Very, Very 1986

So here's the new Weezer single, "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To." The new album, Raditude, drops November 5.

What do you think of the song? I wasn't feeling it until the Beach Boys-style harmony bridge. But I'm curious how this one lands.



EDIT: Okay, a second listen won me over. It's like a long-lost Dexy's Midnight Runners track or something. Not really digging the video, though.

An Album That Might Reach Through Your Speakers and Peel Your Face Off

Even though I put the Foo Fighters' second record at number 80 in my 100 albums list, I actually don't like the band all that much. The Colour and the Shape was their peak, and despite a few bright spots since -- "Stacked Actors," "The Pretender," that cover of "Darling Nikki" -- it's been a pretty mediocre bunch of albums since. Why is that? Well, the fact is that Dave Grohl is not that great a songwriter. He is, however, one of the greatest drummers ever to walk the planet, which is why this news has me so excited.

Check it out: Them Crooked Vultures, a new Supergroup band consisting of Grohl on drums where he belongs; Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age on guitar; and on bass -- no joke -- John Paul Jones. Yes, Led Fucking Zeppelin John Paul Jones. Sweet fancy Moses.

Queens of the Stone Age is great all over -- Songs for the Deaf, in fact, is featured in my next Musical Canon installment. But John Paul Freaking Jones? Is it actually legal to keep this much awesome in one place without a permit from Homeland Security or something? I've been trying to come up with a way this band could be more cool for about twenty minutes now, but I can't do it.

The album is called simply Them Crooked Vultures, and it will be released November 17. I don't have a single or a video to play you, so I leave you only with the tracklist:

1. No One Loves Me & Neither Do I
2. Mind Eraser, No Chaser
3. New Fang
4. Dead End Friends
5. Elephants
6. Scumbag Blues
7. Bandoliers
8. Reptiles
9. Interlude with Ludes
10. Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up
11. Caligulove
12. Gunman
13. Spinning in Daffodils
    

Rock-Paper-Scissors-Astros-Yankees

So: there go the Dodgers. And the Yankees are completely unbeatable right now, so it looks like we're stuck with two teams I don't give a damn about playing each other in the World Series. The baseball purist in me thinks that's perfect: the Yanks and the Phils appear to actually be the two best teams in baseball, which who you'd theoretically like to see play for the championship. The baseball fan in me, on the other hand, wants to root for somebody. And who could that possibly be?

And thus: the Official jwalkernet Baseball Rooting Matrix. A Rock-Paper-Scissors-esque ranking of every team in baseball. Of course, it's not exactly like RPS -- there is one unbeatable team. But it's close enough for our purposes.

Each team, obviously, has my support against every team beneath it...except the last team, who can all die in a fire. I wonder who that will be.

1. Astros
2. Red Sox
3. Dodgers
4. Mariners
5. Twins
6. Rays
7. Rockies
8. Diamondbacks
9. Orioles
10. Marlins
11. Brewers
12. Angels
13. Athletics
14. Royals
15. Blue Jays
16. Rangers
17. Pirates
18. Tigers
19. Indians
20. Padres
21. Reds
22. Cubs
    
23. Nationals
24. Phillies
25. White Sox
26. Mets
27. Giants
28. Cardinals
29. Braves
30. Yankees

So: go Phillies. I guess.

What Did You See? Was It Me, Holding My Face in My Hands and Screaming?

We're only four episodes in, but FlashForward might just be the most infuriating show in the history of television. And not infuriating in a good way, the way Lost is infuriating. In the "I swear to god, I am going to punch every last one of you in the kidneys" way.

I should explain.

Imagine if David Copperfield spent an hour-long special making quarters appear behind a ten-year-old's ear. Imagine if Radiohead and U2 shared the stage for a free concert, but played poorly rehearsed Lady Gaga covers all night. Imagine showing up for a Patton Oswalt comedy performance only to see him read knock-knock jokes for an hour. Imagine someone giving you a free Star Trek DVD and finding out it's "Spock's Brain." Imagine somebody wins that Toys R' Us spending spree they used to give out as prizes on Nickelodeon game shows, but only buys a pack of baseball cards.

That's FlashForward.

I guess I need to keep explaining.

For those of you who haven't seen it (or its heavy advertising campaign), FlashForward has a dynamite premise: everyone, everywhere in the world, simultaneously blacks out for exactly two minutes and seventeen seconds. During that time, everyone sees a vision -- they see themselves, six months into the future. Why did everyone see these visions? Who or what caused them? What could have affected everyone on the planet at the same time? What's the significance of the date of the flash-forwards -- everyone sees themselves at the same moment in time, so why that particular moment? And is the future set? Can knowledge of what's to come allow you to change it? One FBI agent sees himself investigating the blackouts, and uses those few disjointed images as the launching pad to an investigation to try to find answers to the biggest mystery in the history of humanity.

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Told you: dynamite premise. But the execution -- oh gods, the execution.

The writers -- and, also, the editors -- of this show seem convinced that we, the audience, are idiots. Now, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, for sure, but you should get a load of these guys. The FBI agent, the one I mentioned before? His wife -- who actually also plays Penny on Lost, and that's not the last time I'm going draw parallels between these shows before we're done -- sees herself in the future with another man. A man she hasn't met at the time of the flashforward, no less. Drama! And then, while treating a young boy injured during the blackouts -- she's a doctor -- she meets the boy's now-single father...and it's him! Suspense! Not a bad dramatic hook, not at all.

Now, I trust that you can remember that information. But FlashForward does not. Because every time it's brought up -- and it's brought up a lot, as characters spend pages and pages of dialogue doing nothing but standing around reiterating what's already happened -- we are once again subjected to her flashforward. Flash -- the man in front of the fire! Flash -- doctor lady gazing down on him from the stairs! Every. Time.

The FBI agent? He's a recovering alcoholic. But in his vision, he was drinking. We know that it weighs heavy on his mind. But just in case, we're going to look at it ten times every episode. His partner? He didn't see anything during the blackout. Does that he mean he might die? He thinks so. And it scares him. And so he'll tell us. Over. And over. And over. The FBI agent's AA sponsor? He saw himself with his daughter...who's been dead for several years. Hope you like watching that meeting, too, 'cause they're gonna rerun it so many times I'm afraid they'll eat through the tape.

And the dialogue -- Je-sus. The little kids are the worst, speaking in fucktarded ready-for-trailers snippets that don't make the slightest bit of damn sense -- when asked about her vision, the agent's daughter says, "I dreamed there were no more good days." Yeah. Sure you did. A character has a moment where he realizes that he could act and potentially alter the future -- the audience realizes it. The other character in the scene realizes it. But just in case, he talks about it for a paragraph, ending with, "You get to decide whether or not my future happens!"

Each episode opens with a compelling image, and ends with a banging cliffhanger...but the forty minutes in between are the very worst kind of overwritten hackery, buoyed by the occasional moment of brilliance. Personally, I like to lay the blame for this on the network: they're afraid of losing an audience trained on Grey's Anatomy with what is, admittedly, something of an off-the-wall premise. So the fantastical time-loop stuff has to be explained ad nauseam, for fear someone might get confused and flip over to Dancing with Disgraced Former Republicans.*

But you know what? Lost is, hands down, the strangest show I've seen on network television since, well probably ever. And they don't feel the need to spend half of every episode retreading already retread exposition. And you know what else? Lost had the common courtesy to actually make us care about its characters before hitting us with the high drama -- FlashForward doesn't do that, so we get dramatic moments that fall flat, like a father we know nothing about telling his son we know nothing about that the mother we've never seen is dead. We know nothing about the FBI agent's partner other than that he's a surly asshole, so it's hard to get wrapped up in his eventual death and the existential quandary he's having about it. And the reason I keep referring to people by vague nouns instead of their names is because the show hasn't actually made me remember them.

"So," you say, "why don't you just, ya know, quit watching it?"

Because. Because I love the premise. And there are those occasionally flashes of brilliance, which make me think the show might be going somewhere interesting. I get the feeling that this is a problem of execution, not concept, and that if the network gets out of the way and the creators pull their heads from their asses, FlashForward could be something great.

Or, I could end up killing everyone on the planet in a screaming rage.

*Yes, I know Tom Delay isn't on Dancing with the Stars anymore. But I never got a chance to make a joke about it when he was, so just deal with it, 'kay?

The jwalkernet Musical Canon: Part Six (82-78)

It occurs to me now how much longer I have until we finish this thing. I mean, we're just now getting out of the 80s. It didn't really settle in until yesterday, when I was tweaking the list -- I'd made a few egregious errors in ordering the albums from 40-60, but that's all settled now. I've got the whole thing in an Excel spreadsheet, of which here is a tiny, tiny piece:

(The titles in red -- which are numbers 51-100 on this list -- I've given a four-star rating at Rate Your Music. The gold albums, ranked 16-50, have a four-and-a-half star rating. The top fifteen, ranked a perfect five stars, are green, but aren't in this image, obviously. I can't imagine why I thought you would give a damn about this.)

Anyway. With that in mind, tonight we're gonna be a little more brief. One paragraph, if I can manage it. And even though I didn't do this on purpose, it's all '90s rock this time around. Go figure.

82. The Verve Pipe, The Verve Pipe
You remember from earlier in the list: I seem to love the album bands make after the one that makes them famous. In this case, the Verve Pipe followed the one-hit-wondertastic smash "The Freshmen" with this album-long meditation on stardom and the temporary nature of fame. The Verve Pipe is the rare sophomore album that seems to know it's a sophomore album, and there's no way the band could have actually believed these dark, sarcastic songs would actually hit. Even the songs that don't fit that theme are resigned and defeated, filled with broken hearts and bad dreams.

81. Oasis, Be Here Now
The first three Oasis albums, to me, each sound like the controlled substance the Gallagher brothers used most during its creation. Definitely, Maybe has the loud, clumsy roar of a good, drunken bender; (What's the Story) Morning Glory? has the sound and pace of a contemplative cigarette. Be Here Now, with its endless track listing and mammoth songs and arrangements, could only be the result of a mountain of cocaine. And it sure didn't appeal to audiences at the time -- Be Here Now is apparently the most-often pawned record in Britain, and not a single track from it made their greatest hits collection a few years back. But you know what? All that sound, all those guitars, all that noise? That's why I like the album so much. "All Around the World" could just be a throwaway pop song, but Noel Gallagher -- bless his douchebag black little heart -- stretches it out to over nine minutes, adds three (!) orchestras and something like fifteen key changes, and it becomes a fucking work of art. "D'You Know What I Mean?" doesn't need the two minutes of helicopter noises and Morse code at the beginning, I guess...but at the same time it really does. These songs have what Oasis songs had never had and would never have again -- weight. They could have just rewritten "Wonderwall" a dozen times and made everyone happy, but instead they took their body weights in Bolivian marching powder and recorded the longest, loudest fuck you they could muster. And it doesn't hurt that these are the best, most compelling songs the band would ever put together, with some of Noel's strongest lyrics (and Noel's lyrics are always awful -- he makes Coldplay look like Leonard Cohen). It's too bad they never tried anything this incredible again.

80. Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape
Dave Grohl recorded most of the first Foo Fighters album in his spare time, while Nirvana was still a thriving entity. After its success, he had to prove on his second album he was more than just Nirvana's drummer -- he needed to prove his chops as a genuine frontman. Luckily for him, he knocked it out of the park, and The Colour and the Shape is his best post-Nirvana work. This is late-nineties modern rock at its very finest -- "Monkey Wrench" is one of the best songs ever written, and "Everlong" isn't far behind. This is the first album of what I think of internally as my High School Trilogy -- the three albums that, honestly, I don't think I could have survived those four years without. The Colour and the Shape was one of them: when Grohl ends the record by repeatedly screaming I'm not scared, I felt like I could find a new way home, too.

79. Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Billy Corgan is kind of an insufferable tool, but this is the album he was born to make. (It's also the third double album on the list. I can't help it, I like epics.) Everything Smashing Pumpkins was great at, everything they weren't so great at, all of it on display here. The loud ("Bullet with Butterfly Wings"), the melodic ("1979"), the twee ("Thirty-Three") and the insane ("We Only Come Out at Night"), stretching out as far as humanly possible. Siamese Dream seemed better at the time, but they've flipped sides completely looking back now: Mellon Collie feels like a perfect document of its era, when modern rock music was trying to morph into something else entirely -- maybe something electronic, maybe something grand and orchestral, maybe something ugly and out of its mind. It did none of those things, as we ended up with nu-metal and the post-grunge trash that Nickelback and Creed would deliver, but Billy Corgan was at least trying, dammit. For all its faults, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a statement, something most artists of the time couldn't be bothered with. Oh, and "Zero" is just a great fucking song. So there.

78. Days of the New, Days of the New II
See my note in entry 82 about sophomore albums. Travis Meeks recorded the first Days of the New album at the age of seventeen, and it got a lot of play on rock radio for its unique sound -- he wrote grungy rock songs, but played them all acoustically, giving his work an amber tint and special quality. So, of course, he immediately fired the rest of his band and recorded this gigantic follow-up, which is about as sharp a turn one can take artistically without switching genres altogether. It's still rock, I guess -- but I can't think of a whole lot of other rock music that sounds like this, with the oboes and violins taking the melodies on several tracks. Meeks ties it all together as one massive piece, dropping in instrumentals and sound effects freakouts whenever the mood strikes. Suffice to say, Days of the New II was a massive commercial bomb on release, as fans of the first record fled to Creed concerts in horror.

Sunday Comics

My favorite living standup comic, Patton Oswalt, from his fantastic new album, My Weakness Is Strong.

(And the audio/video sync is off. But it's too funny not to post.)

Glenn Beck Is a Damn Lunatic

In other shocking news, the sun set this evening.

Seriously, though, I've never so badly in my life felt the urge to grab a YouTube video by its lapels and shout into its face, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"



Really, now. Any idea what that meant? What that old Coca-Cola commercial had to do with anything? Does he honestly believe that the American life we need to get back to can be found in a goddamn advertisement? Not a fan of Mad Men, I take it, Glenn?

To answer your question, though: No, I don't remember what it was like in a "simpler" America. I grew up in the Reagan '80s. Surging poverty, crack cocaine explosion, crime up, our government illegally funding terrorists, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. And before that, before I was born, what? Watergate? Vietnam? The Kennedy assassination? Segregation? The Great Depression? When the hell was this "simpler" time, you unbelievable horse's ass?

And don't even get me started on that insanely labored -- and laboriously insane -- party metaphor. Who were the "bad" kids taking us to this party? The Democrats? They haven't taken us anywhere, last I checked. And what fucking party is this at which we've stayed too late? I think he was trying to draw a verbal political cartoon but got lost into his own bullshit. So he cried. (And these were especially fake tears, Glenn, even for you.)

Someone commit this man before he hurts himself or someone else. Or, more likely, someone hurts him.