is chuck klosterman really that good?

i have to admit: it took me a while to give chuck klosterman a chance. nothing is more annoying than people telling you you're going to love a writer who writes rambling non-fiction essays because they remind them of something you could write, because i know that either 1) i'll read them and be frustrated that said writer missed the point, or 2) i'll read them and be jealous and pissed that i'm actually just a living, worse version of someone else. after enough time, though, and a stupid enough title, sex, drugs, and coacoapuffs did suck me in. and i enjoyed it. there were flaws, but really i felt like i was having a conversation with a superior peer, which is a nice way (internally directed) of saying he falls under #2. and since then, c.k. continues to impress. his most recent article in espn the mag, for instance, about the nba's inherent flaws was spot on. while two of the three reasons are points i have argued for years, i never could have articulated them as well nor contextualized and framed them in such an overarching, sensible, point-making way.

but is he really that good? a few years ago i would have made similar claims about bill simmons, but now i kind of think he's a boston obsessed overplayed heteronormative less clever klosterman who admires david foster wallace a little too much just because he acknowledges that he's a bit over his head. or am i being too cruel to the sports guy because of an inbred accidental inherent disdain for my former sports-casting directed self and all that was attached to it?

friday night lizzights

it's been one of these "tear the world apart off season and spend season two putting it back together" shows so far, but slowly as the world regains normalcy the season gets better. still, we want to see a football drama that uses the game as a metaphor for life and shows us realistic portrayals of the small town (god i can't believe i'm about to say this...but it's part sarcastic and completely self reflexive, so i'll pretend that makes it okay...) human condition, not an over-the-top melodrama. oh, brian grazer, why do you taunt us so? for other examples, see: 24. arrested development. any other show imagine has its hands in.

imaginationland part deux

the lack of imagination with the bad imagination was a bit disappointing, but jason's voice was hysterical, and like usual, south park continues to be virtually perfect in its execution. they have a fantastic grasp on generic conventions and continue to draw humor perfectly by employing those conventions in a fourth-grade paper world. now, on to part three...

le office

my current feelings on the office season three are as follows:
the office was fantastic because of its normalcy; we all know dwight and creed and kevin and all of the other rosenkrantzes and guildensterns in our lives, and we all like to fantasize that we're a jim or a pam not quite fitting in. the other characters' understated yet obviously present quirky character traits builds up their realism and reinforces our narcissistic identifications. season four (until this week) has been using an hour of time to tell a half-hour of jokes, and has been filling in the remaining time with direct, over-the-top caricaturization of the characters who work perfectly as side notes. that's my problem with this season.

on another note, michael was fantastic in this past episode--another one of those "oh yeah...i guess he isn't soooo bad..." moments. his commercial was perfect: exactly the right amount of racial insensitivity bottled up in an otherwise clever, low budget idea. huzzah!

gyros

fantastic heroes this week, featuring pomona college's acting for tv and film professor alan blumenfeld as a man who can hypnotize you into believing you're in a david lynch film.

the two best shows i wasn't watching part deux

so maybe i jumped the gun a little...

i'm all caught up with friday night lights season two now, and it's awful. but the first season really was that good.

i tried watching pushing daisies episode three last night and i couldn't get past the first ten minutes. maybe i just wasn't in the mood, but still...

but think of the power!!!!

roommate ian just brought up a good point: who is going to be the bad imagination in next week's pt 2? they're going to use the setup to say or do something to someone; it's not just going to be monsters in the traditional sense (there were even a few monsters on the good side).
that's the power south park holds right now, and they know it. last week, they entered katie couric's name into the vernacular as a measurement of poop size just because they could. south park has the power to take the cheep shot and not be looked down upon for it, because...hey...it's south park.

south park (imaginationland)

after two sub-par episodes to start the season...
OH. MY. GOD.
they love doing this to us. they show a few bad ones and then blow your mind. and this was one of the best, most imaginative half-hours in television i have seen in a long, long time.

chiggidy chiggidy chizance.

there you go. a high school male; truly the worst ever.
in every event he could screw up he did.
in the two events he did not get last, it was because of others' faults, not because of his successes.

http://www.reinverlad.com/index.html
read that.

for an explanation, read...
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-eola0306mar03,0,3740057.story?coll=orl-business-utility

...THIS is why we blog.

the two best shows i wasn't watching...

pushing daisies:
if the princess bride and willy wonka had a crime-fighting baby, it would be pushing daisies. clever, romantically visceral, well made, and self-aware, pushing daisies is the most original fairy-tale to hit television in perhaps forever. watch this show.

friday night lights:
the reality and emotion of minor league baseball (aka the semblance of hope i have for america as a concept...) wrapped up in a football show. i'm on episode 9, but i only see it going up from here. it's the athletic wonder years.

tune in.

CHANCE1@$!@#!@#!@%@#$!

ladies and gents-
as i am typing this, 9:52pm pst on friday, october the 12, two thousand seven, CHANCE is on nick gas. chance "the gator" gordy. the greatest guts ever, featuring the worst contestant of all time. i've got it set to keep until i delete on tivo, so expect an upload here soon.
more on this later.

the darjeeling ltd.

fortunately, wes anderson's trademark aesthetic is a pleasing one. unfortunately, while watching darjeeling, i had the feeling that this was wes's way of waving his hands high in the air and screaming to his father "look what i can do!", a sentiment all too appropriate (yet still very annoying) for a film about three brothers traveling together following their father's death. the cuts and shots were all overplayed and trite in that anderson sort of way; it felt like him paying homage to himself (trademark actor cameos, to boot). instead of having a story and choosing the best edits and camera angles to go along with it, this film had an overarching feeling of those being pre-selected and the story being molded around them.

while that bothered me, my biggest problem was the lack of sentiment. whenever i think about wes anderson, the first definitive-idea of him that comes to mind is his aesthetic, but when i really think hard about it i really love his blunt, brutally honest, surreal character interactions. while sometimes he is a bit too quirky, in general it is his fantastic characterization that really makes me fall in love with him. yes, the crickets and the dust beetles line is the first i think of when asked to name a royal t. quote, but the film could have survived without that and been just as good; it could not have survived without the numerous hyperbolized every day family conversations. it's a people story. this film--a film about three brothers on a journey--was ripe for that sort of thing, yet somehow it completely missed it. there are two lines in the entire film that get it right: schwartzman leaving the train and talking to the train stewardess, and schwartzman referencing hotel chevalier, which wouldn't even fully make sense if you hadn't seen the short.

basically, this film is like when your favorite, prolific band comes out with a greatest hits cd of all their most popular songs instead of the ones that both they and you like best. ya--it's great to have all of their singles on one disc, but wouldn't you rather listen to joshuah tree or the unforgettable fire instead of best of 1980-1990 any day of the week?

south park

cartman gets tourette's and this is the best you could do? COMMON! up through cartman stirring his "scotch" and challenging kyle, this was one of the best potential-episodes i had ever seen. it had everything and more going for it. and then cartman bites HIMSELF in the ass? seriously? that's how you chose to get out of the jam of cartman potentially--for all intents and purposes--winning that crazy little game called life? really? i'll give you a do-over. if next week you recycle the first fifteen minutes and just give me a different ending--one where war with kyle ensues and cartman gets exposed--or doesn't--i'll go for it. i won't complain. i'll wipe the memory of the first one completely off the map. just, please...remedy this problem.

the office

episode one had kind of a pathetically slow first half hour, but they picked it up at the end. episode two was pretty decent, but again a bit too slow. how do they expect to make thirty quality episodes if on top of that they're trying to make a bunch of them an hour long? and why make it an hour long if you only have a half hour of jokes? nonetheless i am glad to see that they're diving in head first with this pam/jim thing, because it was getting dangerously close to noxious. it may fail, but at least they grew some much needed cajones. when did this show become so relationship-y outside of the pam/jim thing, by the way?

and is michael going to sue garmin? they have video evidence of him actually being stupid enough to allow the gps to cause him to drive the car into the lake. they should sue.

entourage

(just a quick note...)

(these are getting shorter and shorter...)

worst entourage season ever. although the last episode was possibly the best of all time. ...this should be interesting.

weeds

weeds made its return with a bang. or with four crappy episodes and then a bang, but a bang nonetheless. this show keeps getting goofier and goofier yet somehow it's gaining charm instead of losing it. and--for once in television history--the formerly cute kid hitting somewhat-puberty is a good thing instead of a bad one. viva la revolution!

heroes

there's a hirooooo when you look inside your heart...

episode one was one of the worst returns to tv in recent memory. and NO ONE will ever be that excited by a nissan rogue (or--as eje pointed out--any nissan ever). episode two, though, picked up right where we wanted it to. peter, whose power-discovery was one of the more fun threads in season one, finds himself with a two-to-three episode arch of doing it all over again; hiro--while finding out that idol is a bit too goofy in that francis from malcolm in the middle sort of way--is getting his chance to really turn into a hero, claire's finding herself in that peter parker dealing with being a noone in high school while secretly having powers sort of position, and partman's actually looking somewhat cool. now we just have to get them to never EVER again try to say "the company" with a straight face.

and maybe it's just me (or my memories of her as the nerd on malcolm [who references malcolm twice in one heroes post?]), but hayden panettiere really isn't all that hot. at all. seriously. not at all.

hannah montana

can we get an episode more than once a month? the timing of the o-phone episode made sense (sort of), being nuzzled between the peak of the iphone's popularity and the release of the rock's hannah's-target-audience aimed flick, but nonetheless this defined the all-to-creepy-yet-all-too-perfect use of the word cocktease.


oh lord i'm going to jail.

californication

through eight episodes, david duchovny's return to (somewhat) late night premium cable has been a successful one. while recent episodes are less red shoe diaries and more adult pacey after he loses joey for being neglectful, the show offers enough half-way decent writing to suck me in. that's the deal, though--i can't tell if i actually like the show or if duchovny's bad-assness is just so freakin' textbook narcissistic identification that i can't look away (even though i find myself in reality resembling bill a bit too much for comfort). either way, i'm glad to see that season three of AD was not the last time that i got to see "THESE" (so to speak), with kitty's perfect cameo in episode eight, and i'm quite happy that they chose to explicitly make the suicide girls reference instead of leaving me screaming at the screen that they're ripping off an all-too-common fantasy.
...this could be an interesting one. chalk of another HUZZAH for showtime narratives.