8 posts tagged “humor”

Hey, sorry I haven't updated this blog in so long; like most others, the election this fall had me utterly and exclusively obsessed, which I guess is good considering how it turned out, and that all of us needed to be that exclusively obsessed with it precisely in order for it to have turned out that way. Anyway, I'm going to start getting my random thoughts and cellphone pics up here more often this winter; and I thought I'd start by announcing a new semi-regular feature here, something I've contemplated doing for a long time, which I'm calling "Spare Ideas." Essentially, even though I gave up creative writing in 2004, ideas for creative projects still keep popping into my head, several a day almost every single day; and instead of mentally junking all of these ideas, I thought I would share some of the ones that are particularly funny or unique or that I think would make for a really successful project. And then I'm basically giving open permission to anyone who comes across these ideas online to steal them and work them up on their own if they want; better to do that, I think, than to just have all these ideas lay fallow in my head.

So anyway, here was one I had yesterday -- write a parody of all these dire doom-and-gloom "alternate histories" that have become so popular in the 2000s, an idea which frankly came to me because of recently reading Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (and is actually a very specific parody of that specific alternate-history novel). In the parody story, recently "outed" real-life far-right Evangelical nutjob and former Frasier star Kelsey Grammer secures the 2008 Republican nomination instead of John McCain, and eventually wins the entire general election, by running a glib and slick campaign combining his Hollywood connections with the "aw shucks I'm just a common guy" veneer we just saw the GOP try (unsuccessfully) to run with Sarah Palin; and in the alternate-history parody, such a campaign ends up vying against an inefficient and conflict-riddled Hillary Clinton campaign on the Democratic side, one being torn apart by inner-party strife concerning the semi-racist dirty tricks they used to "steal" the nomination from Barack Obama (or so the Obama supporters claim, leading many to defect to the GOP during the general election), a campaign the GOP can easily argue is a "Beltway insider" one, easily linked in the public mind to the impotent Congress who screwed the pooch on the first economic-bailout bill last September.

After the election, a series of shady background far-right power brokers essentially take over the White House (Karl Rove, Steve Schmidt, etc), secretly setting the agenda for a series of high-profile paleocon cabinet appointees (Sarah Palin, Ben Stein, "Joe the Plumber") to act along with Grammer as a remarkably obedient puppet administration for the people behind the scenes actually calling the shots. And then the usual alternate-history tropes to round things out -- a fascist takeover of the government, noble rebellion by the liberal heroes, valiant deeds from people who in real history were merely entertainment figures and the like (turns out that Paris Hilton saves us all), etc.

There. Want to go write that story? Go right ahead; you have my full permission to steal that idea.

Okay, so last night I found myself in the same position I find myself in a lot of Saturday nights -- nothing really to do, not enough money to really go out randomly to a bar or whatnot, with a bunch of boring crap on my "Getting Things Done" lists that I could be doing if I wanted, and so therefore with a need to find something semi-interesting on TV to keep me half-entertained as I spend my Saturday doing these boring things (like website maintenance, photo uploading, etc). And I saw that one of the broadcast networks here in Chicago, one that features a lot of family-oriented miniseries (channel 38, "Ion," for those who live here themselves), was going to be showing the classic Western miniseries Lonesome Dove last night; four hours of it in a row, in fact, from 6 pm to 10 pm straight. And this I figured would be a good thing to keep me semi-entertained on a Saturday night, but which wouldn't require complete concentration from me, so that I could also get my stupid computer chore stuff done too; not to mention that I've been coincidentally enough thinking about Lonesome Dove recently as well, in that I recently learned that the original novel by Larry McMurtry that the miniseries is based on actually won the Pulitzer in 1986, which came as a big surprise to me.

And I've been thinking in fact about how Lonesome Dove might actually be the last Pulitzer winner (or one of the last, anyway) where you don't need to automatically be a radical liberal in order to even have a chance of really liking it; and yes, I've been thinking of this specifically because of reading Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke recently, this year's winner of the National Book Award so of course automatically on the short list for the Pulitzer as well, which very well might be the first Pultizer contender since Lonesome Dove where you don't necessarily have to be a far-left liberal in order to have a chance of loving it. And of course thinking about how it's no coincidence that Lonesome Dove won the Pulitzer in the middle of the Reagan years; and how in many ways it was Lonesome Dove in particular that Clint Eastwood had in mind when making Unforgiven just three years later, a gritty answer to all those romanticized Westerns like Lonesome Dove that came out at the tail end of the genre's popularity.

Anyway, my point is that I thought it'd probably be pretty interesting to watch Lonesome Dove, on top of it simply being something to keep me semi-entertained on a boring Saturday night; so I ended up watching all four hours, and indeed it kept me pretty entertained (and especially the whole subplot about the town whore who every single male in the area has fallen in love with, because of she being literally the only person any of these guys have fucked in years). But then we start getting into the last half-hour of the evening, and I start realizing that we're not nearly at a point in the story we should be at for a project about to end in a half-hour; for example, the plotline in general is about a group of guys who organize a cattle drive in the 1880s from Texas to Montana, but as of 9:30 the cows had only gotten to Oklahoma. And that's when you start thinking, "No, wait a minute, it's taken them three and a half hours just to travel one state -- there's no freaking way they're going to make it across another four states in the last half-hour! What's going on here? Is this ending at 10 o'clock or what?"

And that's when it dawns on me; that the four hours I just watched were not the entirety of Lonesome Dove at all, but rather the first half, that there is yet another four damn hours to go tonight (Sunday) as well. Ugh! Sneaky fuckers! I would've never committed myself to this stupid happy revisionist Western crap if I had known exactly what I was signing on for! Sigh. So anyway, yes, now I'm roped in to watching another four hours of Lonesome Endless Fucking Dove, the opening credits of which are running right as I'm finishing up this entry. So, off to it I go; and I'm drinking beer as well, because that's what you do when you watch stupid eight-hour revisionist family miniseries on television while bored; so in case I have any more drunken bitter thoughts about what's happening, I might just jump on here again and add them below. You go, Gus! You go and win the heart of that got-dang lovely whore!

6:30: Sheeeee-it! Dey done hung Jake! Daaay-em!



6:49: By the way, it's true what fans of this miniseries say -- that this is one of the best-looking Westerns in the history of the genre, and one of the best-filmed. Lonesome Dove in fact paints a much better picture than most Westerns of what the entire area of the US west of the Mississippi used to look like back then, not just the vast deserts of Texas and the Southwest where most traditional Westerns are set; I was thinking of all this, for example, because of just getting done with the scenes shot at Angelica Houston's house, which is this giant Queen Anne three-story in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, that has this weirdo picket fence around it in the middle of nowhere and with a finely manicured lawn inside of this fenced area in the middle of nowhere. Growing up in the deep Midwest like I did, even in the '70s and '80s most rural areas looked exactly like this; it's a nice touch to see in a miniseries like this, instead of the endless mesas and cactii of most traditional Westerns.

7:44: You did it, Gus! You got that got-dang whore to love you! You did it, you finally did it! And then you promptly dump her in the lap of your former lover in Nebraska, fucking coward! YOU FUCKING CHICKEN-GIZZARD COWARD, GUS! Ah, but it's probably for the best; we're just now entering the last two hours of the eight-hour saga, the push from Nebraska (basically the last settled area of the West in the 1880s) to Montana (where the men are going with their herd of cows, since there are no cows up there right now and people can get rich bringing them up for the first time), where they will need to battle pissed-off Indians and starvation and half-finished maps in order to finish their quest. I'm predicting, in fact, that the last two hours are going to be more action-packed than the first six (which are awfully slow-moving and character-oriented, two obvious details behind why it won the Pulitzer in the first place); it's probably for the best to get rid of all the women-folk before this part of the story, so that the final two hours can be all scalping and stampedes and "Hi-ya!" and shit.

7:59: Dude, Indian spear through Danny Glover's fuckin' abdomen! Dude!!! Oops, I guess I should've mentioned that's a spoiler; Danny Glover gets an Indian spear through the abdomen, while holding a baby no less.

8:16: Dude, I was right! Wicked awesome surprise Indian attack, hi-ya hi-ya! Gus takes two fuckin' arrows to the knee, then has his friend just yank them right out with no anesthesia! Gus is a fucking BADASS!



8:52: GUS!!!! GUUUUUUSSSSSSS!!!!!!!! Goddamn you, dead stubborn son of a bitch!!! Oops, sorry, I've been spending way too much time in Larry McMurtry's universe this weekend, a place where everyone talks like a leftover extra from a Zane Grey novel and has a poetic stoicism that borders on the ridiculous. "So you say the Apocalypse is upon us, Call?" "Ah yep, I reckon." "And this don't bother you done none, Call?" "Ah nope, I don't reckon." Call, you emotionally steady white-bearded summa bitch!

9:19: "I...I...I LOVES YA, NEWT! But I CAN'T SAYS IT, NEWT! But I loves ya, Newt, I loves ya like the son I can't admit in public I have!" Sheesh, if there's ever been a project more typical of the '80s noble "tough male/sensitive male" paradox, it'd have to be Lonesome Fucking Dove, I'm tellin' ya. "Newt! Newt! I...I...I gottsa go now, Newt!" Dah-DAH-de-dah...dah-DAHH-de-daaah...

9:31: Okay, we finally come to something I legitimately love instead of ironically love -- the relationship between basically the only two female characters of the entire miniseries, Diane Lane's character and Angelica Huston's one, who both deeply loved the same guy (Gus, dude who died back about 45 minutes ago, played here by Robert Duvall), who were both deeply loved back by Gus at two very different times in his life, and after having losing the first woman to another man long ago so thinking there wasn't any chance left with her. It's really fascinating, character-wise, to watch these two women awkwardly bond over the fact that they both deeply loved this man, and wished that they could've had him to themselves, but simply can't because it's the 1880s when guys were allowed to run around swearing allegiance to two women at once. And so these two women have to make due as best they can, at least be happy that this great guy loved them in the first place, even if they have to deal with the reality of this other woman being around and having been loved by him that way too. And that in the 1880s in nowhere Nebraska, these two women would end up being drawn together because of this very fact, end up living under the same roof and doing chores together and running a farm together with Huston's two adolescent daughters. I do like all that, I have to admit.

9:43: Ooh, Mexican butcherer and old Ranger-days nemesis Blue Duck faces his fate in an unknown podunk little town! In the last 15 minutes of the eight-hour miniseries too! A great second-to-last coda for the entire thing, I have to admit -- a nice little formal (er, metaphorical) end to the lawless 1800s days of the American West, a start to the "civilized" age of the 20th century. Now that I'm almost finished with the miniseries, in fact, I can see a lot more clues as to why the original novel it's based on won the Pulitzer back in the 1980s; although I'm still highly skeptical, I admit that the miniseries makes me more curious now about reading the original book.

Die, Blue Duck, die die fucking die you psycho!

9:47: Wait...so...Tommy Lee Jones has just been living with Robert Duvall's dead, decomposing body for the last six months? Is that right?! Because I swear I would've thought they would've cremated him the preceding fall, and then just taken the ashes down to Texas to bury in that fruity little garden he and Angelica Huston used to hang out in back when they were young and horny. You know, given that there was a six-fucking-month difference between the two dates. Or am I just getting that wrong?

9:58: "I'm from a paper down at San Antonio. I was hoping to maybe talk with you a few minutes?"

"No. No I can't. And it's because you pronounced it 'San Antonio,' not the proper way, 'San Antony.'"

Walk off into red sunset! Ah, cripes! ALL HAIL LONESOME FREAKING DOVE! Best bloated high-production Western television miniseries in freakin' history! Okay, that's probably the beer talking. Bye!

I likes to rock the party!!!

www.hbo.com/conchords/ <-- COPY AND PASTE, sorry, links not working at VOX today for some reason.
Best! Cable! Sitcom! Ever!

:10 -- See, now here's one of the things about this show that I like so much, that redeems it from the writing mistakes it's often making; how the pace of the plot is just out of control, yet they keep coming up with enough compelling story to let it continue to be that fast. A lot of other shows, I think, would've waited until the very last episode of the season before having Sylar (the big villain) and Suresh (the main hero) confront each other, and to tease that coming confrontation to within an inch of its life; the "Heroes" people, though, decided to buddy them up seven episodes before the end, by Sylar pretending to be another hero and Suresh not being any the wiser. That way, not only is the kill ratio sped up exponentially, but we have the delicious irony in the audience of knowing that Sylar is the bad guy, and that the good guy is palling around with him without knowing any better.

:21 -- By the way, nice to see that dude from Coach still getting work, even if it's an entirely pointless subplot regarding Hiro and Ando stumbling ass-backwards into a con job in Las Vegas.

:35 -- "You know what I'd do with us? I'd stick us in a lab on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean." Nice Lost reference!

:54 -- Well, okay, this wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. I think I'll put an end here to my Lost marathon experiment. Not a very fun show to live-blog to, it turns out.

Too cold in Chicago tonight to have a "Lost" party; so I thought I'd get drunk by myself instead, off the liquor still left over from my Second Life "mesh" event last month, and liveblog my drunken thoughts about the two episodes that are showing tonight. Thoughts posted in reverse chronological order. If you happen to catch this being updated live tonight, by the way, feel free to shoot me an email with your own thoughts to ilikejason [at] gmail.com, and I'll add them to this blog post. Ah, the power of the internet, I tells ya!

Above, the question I hope the most they address tonight, from the last episode: what the hell's up with that creepy "Clockwork Orange" room they stumbled across? Dude, seriously? Goddamnit, Lost producers, will you please answer a question or two before introducing a half dozen more???


Flashes In My Eyes (This week's episode)

:00 - So, the question I'm left with after this episode: was this an attempt on the producers' part to mollify fans, after an entire year so far of answering hardly any questions at all? It does seem that they're throwing some mighty weight behind one particular theory behind the island: that a combination of electromagnetism and fate is running it all, that people get swept into island events because they "need" to, in order to be given the tools to possibly redeem their lives if they want, or perish if they don't choose redemption. And Hanso came across this island during World War II, and spent the rest of his life establishing a foundation to work on the island, to see if they could harness this energy in an organized way, to trigger the next step of human evolution. Except it all went wrong, which is why it was abandoned, but it's too dangerous to bring the original crew back...except how does that explain Henry/Ben promising Juliet that she'd be allowed to go home?

Too many unanswered questions still! Too many theories still contradicting each other! The promo for next week's episode, by the way, explicitly states that "three major mysteries about Lost will be answered next week;" hah, yeah, okay, I'll believe that when I see it. Then again, according to the promo, the woman who was only a shopkeeper hallucination in this episode is going to be a physical Other in next week's, so that's something intriguing to look forward to.

Good night, nerds!

:59 - "You're going to die, Charlie." Nice.

:49 - Eleven minutes left! Not nearly enough questions answered yet! No way to do it in the time remaining! Goddamnit, Lost producers, you're going to do it again, I can tell!

:45 - Finally, a major reveal, if it can be trusted: "You end up on the island because you're supposed to." Lends more credence to the "doomed fate" theory of what's going on, one of many being debated by fans these days. Of course, this information did come from a hallucination.

:43 - Nice allusion to the Wizard of Oz; even the feet of the "red-shoed man" are in the same position as the Wicked Witch, after the bricks fall on him.

:37 - All right, so is Desmond's flashback talking back to him? Is it all a trick of the mind? When the storekeeper says, "And if you don't do all of this, you'll kill us all," should we take that seriously? Is it Desmond's mind influencing what this fictional character is saying, or an external force giving vital clues to both Desmond and us? Gar, this show screws with my head so much! P.S. -- officially drunk.

:34 - Note to self: Google "Widmore Industries" later. Sneaky viral-marketing Google bastards!

:21 - The shard! The shard! Er, I mean, the numbers! The numbers!

:20 - Creepy; microwave that makes the same noise as the timer in the island's bunker.

:15 - So not a flashback? Desmond actually jumped back into his old life after the explosion? Hmm!

:11 - Leave it to the UK survivors to end up on the beach, completely sotted off whiskey.

:08 - Oh shit, that's right, Desmond's got that girlfriend who hired those Arctic explorers from season 2 to find the island. Goddamnit, more questions!

:05 - "That guy sees the future, dude." Well put, Hurley, well put.

:00 - Hah-chah! Finally! And a Desmond episode, too. Here's hoping we get some damn answers!



Not In Portland (Repeat of last week's episode)

:58 - "Well, actually, we're not quite in Portland." Tee hee.

:56 - Okay, so finally, one small answer to one small part of a Lost question: Turns out that some of the Others are being held on the island against their will as well, despite how they may act in front of each other in public. Goddamnit, producers, will you please hand out just a little more answers than that each episode? Please?

:54 - So she mentions in a job interview that she wishes her ex got run over by a bus; and then her ex gets run over by a bus. Now that's a company benefit I like!

:51 - "And then you were scared! Moan cry! And then...you counted to five! Choke sob!" Oh no, Kate, you have two hot sweaty half-naked men constantly competing for your love, on a tropical island where danger lies around every next corner. How fucking horrible it must be to be you.

:45 - Kablam! Juliet -- from submissive wifey to stone-cold killer! This is another theory of Lost that's had some evidence shown; that it's a place where a person can be "redeemed" if they want, change into the person they were meant to be, and that those who embrace it thrive there and the ones who refuse die (like Boone, Shannon, Mr. Eko, etc). That's the frustrating thing about Lost, of course, as regular viewers know; that they drop just enough small hints throughout just enough episodes to start giving you this idea of an overall larger theme, without ever confirming whether your theory is right or not.

:34 - Creepy Clockwork Orange room! Creepy Clockwork Orange room! And here are some things about the scene you might not know: 1) Near the end of the sequence, a clear shot of Dr. DeGroot is shown, the mysterious founder of the DHARMA Initiative of whom we currently know almost nothing; 2) the text shown in that sequence repeats an anagram of "Lost Time," a phrase the producers claim on the podcast is very important for understanding the entire nature of the island; and 3) a couple of crafty audience members discovered that backwards speech had been implanted into that scene's soundtrack as well; when played the right way, it's a variety of voices saying "Only fools are enslaved by time and space" at a variety of speeds. Hmm! Note, by the way, how both Kate and Sawyer get hypnotized by the video merely after a few seconds of watching it, and how they physically have to tear themselves away from the screen to regain composure.

:31 - An ongoing question within Lost, sparked again by Juliet checking out the security monitors: if the Others have regular access to off-island commodities, why is all their technology from 1974 or earlier? They give hints both ways, but have never directly addressed the question.

:29 - Note to self: Google "Mittelos Science" later. Sneaky producer viral-marketing bastards. P.S., nice to see that dude from "Suddenly Susan" getting work again.

:24 - "I'm Tom, by the way." How I thought Jack should've answered: "Who the fuck cares? You've been trying to kill me for the last 60 days!"

:14 - Okay, to clear things up.... The ultra-hot Other who just saved Kate and Sawyer? She's actually Rousseau's daughter, the crazy French chick the survivors discovered in season 1. Who apparently, by the way, is actually Serbian, not French, according to the latest Lost Podcast (done by the producers of the show before each new episode). And numerous people claim that Henry/Ben (the dude in surgery) is her father; but the producers say in the podcast that that doesn't necessarily mean her biological father. Caught up now? And if Rousseau had the baby on the island, as she claimed, she's now old and smoking-hot enough that they've easily been on the island now 16 to 18 years. Sigh; can you see which direction my mind is heading tonight? Please, producers, no more sweaty half-naked smoking-hot girls tonight; oh no, wait a minute, this is Lost, what am I talking about?!

:10 - Could Juliet's encounter with her ex be more stereotypically evil? "Ah, yes -- hot new research assistant, please meet one of my lonely plebes, who happens to be my ex-wife. Ex-wife, could you please turn the lights off on the way out? I'm about to fuck my new research assistant and turn her into a new plebe." Bwah hah hah hah.

:00 - I should explain that the liveblogging of last week's episode probably won't be as good as the new episode, since I've already seen it twice (once on television, once online, God bless ya abc.com). Also, because I'm not nearly as drunk yet as I undoubtedly will be by the time the second episode is halfway through.

Here, a shot of me getting ready for the splendor of it all, sent in via satellite courtesy of the VOX Palm client. Have I mentioned lately, by the way, how much I love the VOX Palm client, and how flawlessly it works? I update almost this entire account through my Treo, and just literally never have a problem; it's just like the old Jason Pettus Instant LocatorTM moblog I had at my personal site, except that one was cobbled together myself and ultra-buggy all the time. Glad to see a major blogging company finally embrace the idea of a true mobile multimedia client. What I'm drinking, by the way, is raspberry-flavored Bacardi Silver with an orange wedge, left behind at my party by God only knows who. Thanks, anonymous overdrinking partygoer!