Short and to the point, Larry Lessig:
Lost: Without It
Could this be another TV screed? Possibly … mark me down as one of the few, the proud, who has never watched “Lost” … which, if you are one who HAS watched it, you will know has aired its final episode. Let me pass the commentarial baton to Mary McNamara of the LA Times, who writes this:
Well, it could have been worse. It could have all been a dream.
Actually, that might have been better, if the finale of “Lost” had ended with some alien life form or surprising human … opening his eyes from the craziest dream ever.
Instead, it turns out the passengers of Oceanic 815 are all dead, victims, if the end-credit imagery is to believed, of the same tragic plane accident that started the whole thing. Six seasons of polar bears, bachelor pad hatches, landlocked ships, personal submarines and a fleet of fallen airplanes, and it was all apparently some sort of shared afterlife experience. Excuse me, but what are we supposed to do with those religious statues full of heroin, with Fionnula Flanagan’s pendulums, with the crazy Frenchwoman and the time shifts and the whole glorious Richard Alpert back story? And what on Earth are we supposed to do with the Dharma Initiative?
Release them into the universe, apparently, along with the image of Allison Janney in bad biblical hair. Because as Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) kept telling Jack and anyone who would listen, really, none of it matters, except that it’s over, and even if Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse decided, and possibly at the last minute, that their uber-narrative would be an over-the-top marriage of “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” at least it’s over, and that’s something.
I couldn’t have said it better myself — especially inasmuch as I didn’t have to endure it in real time as the plot-ishness unfolded … but I did endure the endless rehashing over the plot by co-workers, and that’s not going to be missed either.
Keep your eye on these
Here you go: a couple of sites to keep your eyes on, while I sleep: Recent Seismic Activity and a detailed list of the last 30 days. Because, I mean … Indonesia now?
My Friend Wants Me to Watch This TV Show…
Fair warning: this is just me unloading about the ultimate dumbness of TV … click away now if you’ve had enough over the years of my thoughts on the subject…. they haven’t changed. My friend wanted me to watch this TV show because her nephew worked on it:
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Program Title: |
Undercover Boss |
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Genre: |
Reality |
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Description: |
CEOs of various large companies slip into the ranks of their lower-level employees; as they work alongside their subordinates, they see first-hand the effects of the policies they have made and where potential internal problems and opportunities lie. |
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I know I don’t spend nearly enough time in the MSM to be in step with my fellow man, but I can’t figure out why a person who works would want to spend any of their time off watching a show about work … a show that’s not even a comedy, like The Office … what am I missing? Do bosses get extra credit for learning that they are supposed to know all the impacts of the policies they enact? Or do the workers get to hoot about what mindless drones their managers are — and they need to be sitting in front of a TV to do that, why exactly?
And then there’s my very mixed emotions about “reality TV” … where celebrity-seeking nobodies are to paid professional actors what unpaid interns are to experienced employees in the workplace — kinda the same thing my friend’s husband was saying about the CGI creations in Avatar … soon they won’t need real actors in the movies, except for the voices.
Oh, and what does this mean, in terms of the word “reality”:
a “supervising story producer,” which means that [he]wrote and shaped the material in the editing room. Just like in documentary, reality TV docu shows are written and crafted during Post-Production. Crafting the character arcs, storylines, and the underlying narrative themes…
Not that I’m dissing the nephew or his craft, don’t get me wrong … but what I get from that is heaping helpings of editing in the service of concocting a feel-good storyline. How quickly did everyone agree to be OK with the fact that there’s no reality in reality TV? Second episode of the first Survivor? And once everyone conceded that it wasn’t real, what was the continuing allure?
I’ve just never been able to work up any enthusiasm for the cultural phenomenon of “we call this ‘reality’ even though we know it’s all essentially faked up for the show” … I know it’s connected to the hunger for celebrity in this culture, celebrity having become the thing we manufacture instead of clever and useful new inventions that make life better for the teeming millions…. This whole situation is definitely one of the trends that has made TV the thing I never do anymore ….
Today in The Dish: Calling or Career?
A quote from my old friend Michael Lewis:
A job will never satisfy you all by itself, but it will afford you security and the chance to pursue an exciting and fulfilling life outside of your work. A calling is an activity you find so compelling that you wind up organizing your entire self around it — often to the detriment of your life outside of it.
Pasted from <http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/>
Testing blogability
Continuing to explore the tools provided and the options available for blogging out of the notebook and OneNote. Breaker, breaker …
