Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb

This is what we in the blogosphere like to call “posting just for the sake of posting.” Not sure how that’s distinguishable from everything else on here, but still thought it’d be a good idea to acknowledge that.

Because the “Arrested Development” fans don’t hate me enough: I’ve got to say I didn’t like Monday’s episode. I think I got it, what with the references to Oscar-winning actresses as stunt-casting and having it be mostly about Andy Richter who also had a critically-acclaimed show cancelled, but it just crossed some line for me. It just seemed more desperate and blatant than funny, even though they did come right out and say they were being desperate and blatant.

I did like Michael’s line about “we’ve been given plenty of chances, maybe we’re just not worth saving,” and the frequent mentions of the characters not being “relatable.” Not even because I agree, but because it was a sign that they’re aware of what went on with the show and how it’s perceived, and aren’t just doing the predictable response of saying “corporate entertainment sux!” and “Middle America is stupid!” and “we’re too smart for all these stunts!” A lot of that is true, but it was good that they acknowledged some accountability. They’ve shown that they can make a pointed comment and retain some subtlety at the same time; I wish they’d done more of that instead of going for the obvious “Not HBO, but show time” stuff.

I think that the thing that bugged me the most about it: “Arrested Development” is now going to join “Firefly” and “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” as a show that’s remembered more for being cancelled than it is for being good. And that’s a shame, because there’s more to it than just “a genius show that most people are too dumb to understand.”

And the gags I did like: the newspaper headline from the title, when Tobias calls it “the OC Disorder” and Michael responds with his usual “don’t call it that,” and George Michael’s response when Michael says he expresses himself just fine: “Yeah. Fine. What? Whatever, I don’t care. It’s dumb.” I still say Michael Cera’s the best actor on the show.

What Chuck Did

Part 3 of 6Today I got caught up on the remaining “Lost” episodes. It left me feeling sad, intrigued, and wary.

Sad because you-know-what happened to you-know-who, because I was just starting to like her. I realize that was the point, because even though it’d already been spoiled for me, I could tell as soon as they started making her sympathetic that bad things were on the horizon. It just seemed inevitable.

Intrigued because like it or not, these guys do know how to handle cliff-hangers and doling out information. Like I said about “Alias,” they’re pretty good about giving you a pay-off when they set something up. If they show you a piece of film, they’re going to show you what’s on the piece of film, instead of making you wait a month or longer. And intrigued about how much speculation on the internets is going on, including the teaser sites complete with Disney terms of use. And the total geekitude that reveals stuff I never would’ve figured out, like that the numbers in the code all add up to 108, which is the number of minutes on the countdown timer.

Wary because I don’t know how they’re going to get a whole nother season out of it without running out of big revelations. I don’t know about the rest of the fans, but I’m getting a little tired of the flashbacks. They’ve been building up to Kate’s backstory since early on, and it just struck me as kind of “meh.” The only really engaging part of all that was trying to place where I’d seen her mom before (she was one of the aunts on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”). The only thing left for a flashback to reveal, as far as I’m concerned, is what happened to Jack’s wife, and I can’t say I’m all that interested.

Before I sound too critical, though, I should say that I’m still impressed with how the show manages to maintain a tone instead of just getting mired in its own gimmicks and plot twists. It’s consistently about morality and fate, which makes me hopeful that they’ll manage to pull it all together into a meaningful story instead of just a series of cliff-hangers and internet mysteries. (And which makes the whole “They’re in Purgatory!” theory more convincing and makes me wonder why people were so quick to dismiss it).

Whatever the case, I’m now in the same boat as everyone else, and I have to wait until January 11th for the next reveal just like the commoners. Episodic television was not designed for people with my attention span.

Two Thousand Six

Only five more years until VH-1’s “I Love the 00’s”! I can’t wait to hear what wacky things the irrepressible Hal Sparks and Michael Ian Black have to say about iPods!

I spent New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas! For a couple of hours, on a layover from my flight. But that’s still cool! And my luggage is still enjoying Vegas, because it didn’t make it to San Francisco! Totally awesome! Damn I’ll be happy when I never have to fly again!

Other than that, New Year’s was fairly low-key but fun. Mac and I were playing Trivial Pursuit with a bunch of his friends, and we were of course failing to get any of the answers in the sports and games questions. Until the crucial moment when we needed the final Sports category piece, and the question was to identify a 20-sided die. If that’s not an omen of good luck in the coming year, I don’t know what is.

I made out pretty good with the Christmas loot, too: a Wallace and Gromit art book, a MST3K DVD collection (times two), Serenity, “The Clone Wars” on DVD, a book and CD on how to play the banjo, and gift certificates to iTunes and Best Buy. I also got some martini glasses from Club 33, and a Voice-Activated R2-D2 robot to fight it out against the Roomba. And when my luggage finally gets delivered, and my repaired hard drive comes back in the mail, it’ll be like Christmas all over again!

I think I’m supposed to put New Year’s Resolutions here or something, but I’ve already smoked half a pack of cigarettes, ate about a pound of brownies, and slept in until 2pm on January 1st, so they’re pretty much all broken.

Teen Girl Squad

Just once I’d like to get in on something from the beginning, instead of a year and a half after everyone else. I’d also like it to be aimed roughly around my age range. Until then, here is my book report on “Veronica Mars.”

“Veronica Mars” is a show about a high school student in her mid 20s who solves crimes for her dad’s detective agency while investigating her best friend’s death and the disappearance of her mom. She used to be popular but now she is not after her dad accused her ex-boyfriend’s father of killing his daughter, who was her best friend and her ex-boyfriend’s sister. She has a pet pit bull and a friend who is black and another friend who is Latino. The biggest mystery is how the UPN managed to land a series this good.

Seriously, it’s just solid. It’s got a lot of buzz around it on the internets and in Entertainment Weekly, and you can kind of see how solid it is by the trouble its supporters have in describing it. I’ve seen it compared to Nancy Drew, Twin Peaks, Peyton Place, The Outsiders, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Philip Marlowe, the OC, Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson’s Creek, Colombo, and Star Trek. I made up the last one, just because it seems like it needs more of a “hook,” when it really should just be able to stand on being a very well-written and well-acted show. With a lead actress who’s really just perfect with the part and is also pretty hot. Which I don’t feel any guilt pointing out, because I’m just not buying her as a 17 year old for one second. And I’m the guy who didn’t believe that the kids on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” were around my age.

Like every other series these days, it does the self-contained episodes thing with a bigger storyline going on in the background. Unlike other series, it actually handles both well. And the thing that really surprises me is that it almost never panders. The dialogue isn’t affected, the mysteries are neither too convoluted nor too obvious, the plots aren’t predictable, and both the humor and the drama genuinely work 99% of the time. I thought I had a major series plot point telegraphed, and when they revealed that I was right, they pointed out how everyone was foolish for not realizing it before and put an interesting spin on it in the next episode.

I’m genuinely impressed. Not blown away by it, but you don’t really need to be. It just does its thing and does it very well. And now I’m intrigued to know how the first season ends.

Celebrity Sudoku

I’m going to have to stop watching extra features on DVDs and the like, because I keep running into situations where I see somebody whose work I like a lot, but get the feeling that if I met them in person I’d just never stop wanting to smack them around.

I already bitched about David Cross earlier, but left it kind of vague. Mac and I were watching a little bit of his “stand-up” routine, only enough to see the bit where he said he was pro gay marriage and got a huge round of applause from the crowd. That’s what crystallized what it is that bugs me — it’s not that he’s Varney, it’s that he’s so earnest. I’ve already said I’m getting tired of the whole spirals of irony thing, and appreciate it when people aren’t afraid to just come out and say what they mean.

But if you’re a comedian, don’t you have to keep it funny? I haven’t seen his entire stand-up routine, but I have seen a lot of the stuff he’s done, and I just keep seeing predictable parody in order to Make A Statement. Bob Odenkirk’s stuff is pretty shallow, but at least on “Mr. Show” you got the sense that he was enough of a counterbalance to let things get absurd when they were in danger of getting too much into obvious social commentary.

The image thing would work better if I could say that Jim Varney was always too cross, but I don’t think that was true.

I was watching the special features on the Serenity DVD, and there was Joss Whedon talking about the fans and why they were important and his philosophy of the show and the movie and what they meant to him. And the dude is just fey. I realize that shouldn’t annoy me, but it just made me want to yell at the screen for him to shut the hell up. Serenity is an amazing movie, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is one of the best TV series ever made, I even read the second trade paperback of his Astonishing X-Men series and thought it did everything exactly right. But every time I hear him talk, he just strikes me as a more subduded, more self-aggrandizing, nerdier version of Charles Nelson Reilly. Maybe it’s just me.

And again, the image thing doesn’t really say anything about Tina Fey. The whole concept needs a little bit more work, I think.

I looked around online and it turns out there already are versions of “Celebrity Sudoku,” but they’re just versions of the real Sudoku that use pictures instead of numbers. I think I didn’t understand the rules of real Sudoku, either; apparently the numbers don’t add up to anything, you just have to list all 9 digits. I still think it’d be cool to have a game where you have to put actors into a 3×3 square, with the rule that all 3 of the people in each row or column have to have been in a movie or TV show together. Maybe that would be a fun rainy day project.

Uninvited

Technically you’re supposed to wait on these things until somebody passes the baton, but it’s 4 AM Pacific Time and I’m still awake browsing the internet and I’ve already seen 4 different variations of this thing 4 times tonight.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: video store clerk, working the shrink-wrapping machine at a Maxell tape warehouse, accounting assistant at a veterinary school, computer game designer.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Raising Arizona, Young Frankenstein, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Four places you’ve lived: Decatur, GA; San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Athens, GA.

Four TV shows you love to watch: “Alias,” “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law,” “The Venture Brothers,” “The Daily Show”

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Tokyo, Paris, Dublin, Rock City

Four websites you visit daily: Achewood, Gizmodo, Musty TV, GameSpot

Four of your favorite foods: Japanese curry soba, biscuits and sausage gravy, the Chick fil-A sandwich, my mama’s corned beef hash

Four places you’d rather be: in bed asleep; seeing the sunrise from the Boardwalk at Disney World; taking a leisurely tour of Kyoto; at the top of the Empire State Building

Four of your favorite songs: “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin, “Sweet Thing” by Van Morrison, “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” by Alison Krauss & Union Station, “Song for My Father” by Horace Silver

The Dharma Initiative

Thanks to Steve Jobs and Robert Iger, I was able to see the first three episodes of “Lost” this season. Picture quality is lousy blown up to full-screen size, but it was detailed enough to see the Dharma Initiative logo tattooed on the shark that was threatening to attack Sawyer.

I’m not going to post any more spoilers here — I know what it feels like because my mom and brother keep trying to spoil what’s gone on in Season 2 so far. I’ve managed to resist the temptation to download the other episodes so far. I don’t understand how TV is going to work in the New Age, when everything is timeshifted; as it is I’m afraid to go on the internets until I get caught up with anything remotely popular.

I’m still looking for something to fill the time until I get back and get caught up. The wireless internet connection here is way too slow to waste as much time web-browsing as I do at home. I guess I should technically be embarrassed that all my leisure activity involves a net connection more than things like oxygen and sunlight. But in my defense, it is Georgia. And we keep seeing reports on the news that the world’s largest aquarium is sold out for tickets.

Skip got season one of “Veronica Mars” on DVD for Christmas, and I’m going to borrow those and see if that’s worth watching. In case it gets cancelled, I can’t be blamed because it’s on UPN and that’s pretty much equivalent to being perpetually on the brink of cancellation.

Yes, Virginia, there are arrogant, soulless jerks.

I’m not enough of a presence in the blogosphere to get pulled into any internet memes yet, but I can do the next best thing and get into a blog argument. My friend Seppo fired off a post killing Santa Claus, and now I have to use the healing power of the internets to restore the faith in humanity to the children of the world.

Seriously, though, I should make it absolutely clear that Seppopolous is not one of the arrogant, soulless jerks referred to in the title. This woman is. That is, of course, the substitute music teacher who couldn’t read “The Night Before Christmas” to her students without telling them all that Santa Claus isn’t real. Because, she explained, it’s important for children to know The Truth. Seppo’s post reminded me of the story and how much it pissed me off.
Continue reading “Yes, Virginia, there are arrogant, soulless jerks.”

Merry Christmas

Unless you’re a raging insomniac like I am, by the time you read this I’ll be on my way back east for Christmas with the family. Not having a week of build-up and shopping and a big Christmas tree this year has thrown everything out of whack somehow. It’s hard to believe that it’s only two days away, and I can already tell that it’ll seem like it’s over too soon.

I know I’m looking forward to seeing the family again — it already feels like it’s been much longer than a month since Thanksgiving — and to having a week off with no obligations. It’d be better if I could get off the damn internet and get to packing and such, but I’m getting around to that. (See “raging insomniac,” above.)

I hope everybody has a happy holiday and sees exactly as much of their family as they want to see this year.

You All Everybody

I finished the first season of “Lost” sometime over the past week. I like it a lot; I can’t say that I’m wetting myself to see what happens next, but I do have to admit to downloading the first few episodes from iTunes so I can watch them on the flight back home. (TiVo has been recording a few, but not all of them from season 2. According to the episode guides, I’m missing episodes 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42).

Favorite moment so far is when Hurley is running through the airport and there’s the soccer team with the numbers on their shirts. Next favorite would be Arzt’s final scene, and I got more about that to say in a minute. Most annoying characters are now Walt and Michael. Yeah, they’ve had a tough time and yeah, you’ve got to feel sorry for them, but come on. All they do is pick fights with people and fail to connect and conjure polar bears. The annoying people you feel sorry for are the worst kind of annoying people, because you can’t just come right out and be mean to them and tell them to go away.

I admit that Sun and Jin’s story gets me every time they have an episode with them. Also, Sun is hot. And I also got a little weepy at Jack’s story where his dad told him he wasn’t able to let go. That was like a double-whammy of sad, in the flashback and the present day.

I’m thinking that this is one of the rare shows that’s better in weekly episodes instead of watching them all in one go. It’s still good, but I get the impression that the reason it caught on with so many people is because they had time to ponder all the cliff-hangers and mysteries and build up the speculation around them. When you watch the whole thing in two weeks, it’s hard to have a reaction more profound than, “Well, that happened.”

One thing that concerns me, though, is that I watched a couple of the documentaries on the last disc and I’m worried that I might already be too much invested in what’s going to end up being a disappointment. Obviously, there’s a lot that they’re just making up as they go along, but that’s not that bad as long as the stuff they come up with has payoff and isn’t just filler. (They’ve proven they can come up with stuff on the spot and make it work; according the documentary, they invented the characters Sun and Jin at the last minute just because they knew they wanted to cast Yunjin Kim).

What bugged me was how they were talking about the pilot and how it originally had Jack be killed by the monster when they find the cockpit. Kate was originally supposed to be the hero of the show. It was that way pretty late, too, apparently; they have footage of both Yunjin Kim and Evangeline Lilly auditioning for Kate’s part using her dialogue after Jack’s death. The reason that annoys me is because it’s such a cheesy gimmick. It’s the kind of stuff high schoolers write when they’re trying to be daring and bust up cliches. You get attached to the hero, and bang! He dies! Sure, Hitchcock did it, but he kind of ruined it for everyone else.

Now, you could say that the bit with Arzt was the same thing, but it’s not. The reason I liked it was because it was such an obvious gimmick, that everyone could see coming from a mile away, and there was never any doubt whatsoever how that was going to play out. So it played with the gimmick by making it all about timing. Your suspense doesn’t come from wondering what’s going to happen, but when. And the timing of the punchline was just about perfect.

So I’m still hoping that what’s down the hatch is cool, and the monster is cooler than just black smoke, and whoever The Others are is cool, and the story behind the numbers, and Claire’s baby, and Walt’s “being different,” and the whispering, and the island itself all turn out to be worth the investment. I’m actually highly skeptical that the revelations themselves will be all that great, but I still have faith that they can make the lead-up to the revelations great. Like in “Twin Peaks.” Finding out who killed Laura Palmer wasn’t all that impressive on its own, but leading up to it were some of the most downright horrifying moments in television ever.

And unlike “Twin Peaks,” and “The X-Files,” and “Buffy,” I’m hoping that they know when to quit.

The Bob Loblaw Law Blog

Turns out there really is a Bob Loblaw Law Blog, a fact which makes me about as happy as anything on the internet can. (It doesn’t look like a fake site done as a “Arrested Development” tie-in, because a) it’s been up since November, b) if it is a joke, it’s an unbelievably subtle one, and 3) that would imply that Fox pays to advertise the show).

Yesterday was about as crappy a day as I’ve had in a while. When I got back from King Kong Sunday night, I stayed up a couple of hours later to finish some work I had to get done. And then I couldn’t get to sleep, at all. I wasn’t wired or anything, just absolutely unable to get the brain to turn off. It was around 7 am before I could get to sleep, and that was only after I watched an episode of “Lost” that upset me so much I just wanted to lie down (it was the one where Claire’s baby is born and Boone… well, you know). I was awakened at 10 am by a phone call, but when I answered it they’d already hung up, and then I just fell into a coma again. Missed a phone meeting, missed the work I was supposed to get done, just completely f-ed everything up.

When most people get insomnia, they’re at least able to get up the next day and be tired but semi-functional. For me, I always get into this weird state where I’m semi-conscious but physically unable to get out of bed. I guess if nothing else, it’s a reminder that I don’t need to be actively seeking more caffeine.

I also headed out to the post office to pick up a package my parents had sent. (Presumably I was asleep when it was originally delivered). The line stretched all around the post office, and there was a separate line in the back to pick up packages; that line had about 10 people in it. So I waited for about 20 minutes, until there was one woman in front of me. The guy handed her her package, mumbled something no one could make out, then closed the door. The woman turned to the rest of us waiting in line and said, “He said they’re not taking any more customers.”

It was one of those things where I just shut down; I had absolutely no idea how to react. That somebody could be that much of a dick — not even saying to my face that he was closing up, but just shutting the door and slinking off into hiding — my brain doesn’t know how to handle it. The woman behind me did, though; she shouted “Asshole!” and stomped to the other line. Everybody else who’d been standing in line filed past me to the other line or out the building to come back the next day, and I just kept standing there.

Sure, my rational brain knows that cussing at the guy or pitching a fit wouldn’t have done any good and would’ve just gotten me upset, but the whole thing was doubly annoying. Once for wasting my time, and double for giving me another opportunity to just stand there filled with impotent rage, wondering what would be a better course of action than just standing there like a wimpy doofus, or getting into a profanity-filled screaming match with a stranger.

The rest of the night was good, anyway. I had a big steak.

Kong

King Kong is frickin’ awesome. I think from now on, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens should make every movie. Except for the ones by Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers.

Sure, it’s three hours long, and I could tell it was three hours. Not that I was wanting it to be over, just that I was aware of how long it was taking. That’s the closest I can get to a criticism of it — there was nothing in the movie that was bad or completely superfluous, but it still felt like a lot of stuff. I wish they’d spent more time on the island and less with acts 1 and 2. Just about everything that happens on the island is just spectacular, the Tyrannosaurus fight in particular, so I wish there’d been more of that.

I don’t have much to say other than that it’s a damn fine movie, the best I’ve seen this year. I’d heard reports that it was very moving, so I was expecting to get all caught up in that. I didn’t, really; I cared what was happening, but wasn’t particularly moved by it except for the action sequences.

One of the things that impressed me about the Lord of the Rings movies was how Jackson made them as movies, that is, combining elments of horror B-movies, science fiction, fantasy, genuine horror movies, melodrama, pirate movies, battle scenes, etc. to tell what could be a pretty dry fantasy story. King Kong isn’t quite as epic, but it’s definitely a movie made by someone who loves movies and hates pretension. Of course there are all the B-movie elements, but there’s also a sense throughout that it’s all charming and funny. The T. Rex scene isn’t just spectacular, but it’s genuinely funny in how it just keeps building. All the bug scenes are intended for the schock value gross-out, and they’re just fun. And Ann and Kong’s scenes are designed around vaudeville slapstick and a child’s tantrum, and it just works, and it’s just charming. Never too corny to work, and never too absorbed in irony or self-reference. It’s just designed to be enjoyed.

I knew going in that I was going to like Naomi Watts, because I think she’s just great in everything I’ve seen her do. I was surprised that I liked Adrian Brody — he’s pretty much useless to the movie, in retrospect, but while it’s going on you always get the sense that he’s just supposed to be there. What really surprised me was Jack Black; his character is supposed to be smarmy and unethical, but genuinely passionate about what he’s doing, and undeniably charismatic. So it turned out to be perfect casting, and he did a good job with it. He’s actually got more of a character arc than anyone else, including Ann.

And the more I think about it, I guess I have to change my story about not being moved. The best scenes are still the action sequences, but the one that really got me on an emotional level is when they’re back in New York and do the Kong show at the theater. The combination of the ape chained up, and the dancers in black-face, all just hit me as “this is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen.” Even more than the ending. (Which I won’t ruin here.)