Five things make a post especially if they are long and one is about TV
1. The HDGF is away - she left on Friday, and won't be back for over a week more - and I miss her. She's gone on an Icelandic Saga with a friend from high school - I'm sure you'll hear all about geysers and Finnish design and eating puffins and whatnot when she gets back. I was very excited for her and happy that she gets to do this (I don't have the time or money ATM, and I've had more opportunities to travel than she has, in the past.) But this is the biggest separation we've had in years. She's hardly had internet access, no IM, certainly no phone. The last time she was out of phone range was 4 or 5 years ago, and then she had internet and we could IM. It feels weird, and I am a little sad, though I enjoy picturing her cutely enjoying her north Atlantic adventures.
2. So I coped with this trauma by having an extraordinarily indolent weekend in which I attempted to ward off loneliness with talking people in the electronic box. I happened on this article about films and TV shows (unjustly) killed by competition, and one of the first examples was Studio 60, killed by 30 Rock. I thought it was a very smart read on what was wrong with Studio 60, which I had actually liked quite a bit, namely that Aaron Sorkin couldn't write SNL sketches, like, at all. Just not funny (in that way), and they took up a lot of time. Anyway this prompted me to sit in bed and stream all 22 episodes consecutively.
There were quite a few I hadn't seen the first time, including the first few episodes. It prompted a few reactions. For one thing, I think it's impossible to really buy the premise, even though other things he's done, like The West Wing and The Social Network, would seem to strain credulity even more. The insight that this is at least partly the fault of the fake SNL was, I think, spot on, but I also felt acutely how unstressed these people seemed to be, with their high-stress jobs. And that made me wonder, was The West Wing like this too? It was, wasn't it? Why isn't everyone having a nervous breakdown all the time? OK, technically they abused drugs and messed up relationships and stuff. But they didn't really, like, yell at anyone, as a rule. They were pretty mellow. People wig out a hell of a lot more where I work, and it's not a big TV show let alone the White House. And combined with everyone being rich and successful and all finding love quickly due to early cancellation, there was this feeling of cushioned safety - I kept thinking of River Song saying, "Everyone lives."
Watching it all together, I could see how much Sorkin had set it up to be one story, and I wondered how long an arc it would have had if it had gotten another season. The story he sets up in episode one (which starts with Judd Hirsch's beautifully lampshaded Network outburst), about how Matt and Danny had been fired, and the thread about McCarthyism and blacklisting running through various episodes, and then finally the unpacking of that in flashbacks to the month after 9/11 in the multi-episode finale, bracketed by the endlessly ongoing war as it effects Tom, whose brother is taken hostage in Afghanistan - I thought that was pretty cleverly done, and much more unified than I expected - e.g. with the tiny, unnamed recurring character of the Standards and Practices enforcer. Although the fact that Tom's brother is rescued, without needing everyone to pitch in a couple million to hire the expensive private black ops people - like I said, everyone lives.
But the person living that I really wanted to mention was Jordan, because I realized something about the climax, where Jordan goes into the hospital before the baby is due because she can't feel it kick, and then she has preeclampsia and almost dies. This is a TOTAL shout-out, across Brad Whitford's (6? 7?) years on The West Wing, to what must have been his first major national TV moment, when he guest starred on a harrowing and brilliant season 1 episode of ER called "Love's Labor Lost" about a healthy young pregnant woman who comes into the ER with her husband (Brad W.) and about 30 hours later is dead, from pre-eclampsia and a series of bad medical decisions. Except this time, Sorkin wants, yes, everyone to live.
And that gives the whole show a weird feeling, because there are a lot of things going on that it really has no business being so smug about. I'm all for everyone living, but there's a pervasive aura of privilege and self-righteousness. The show's biggest theme is that the haters are wrong, that liberal Hollywood is not terrible but full of Heart, and the trauma of Amurrika hating on it in the Bush years -- and yet he seems so cluelessly indulgent of exactly the type of self-love that people despise Hollywood for.
3. Speaking of ER, I saw Anthony Edwards at BAM last week, when we went to MacBeth at the Harvey (which was good, though I didn't like Lady MacBeth). Not acting - he was in the audience, and I passed very close to him and there were smiles. He hadn't really aged at all; he looked great, very relaxed and like he was enjoying himself with his pals. I saw John Leguizamo last week, too, in Central Park. And then a week later I was on the same walk in Central Park, and I sat on a bench in this pretty area up near W 96th, not far from where I'd seen him, and overheard this woman saying, "I've got to go - John Leguizamo tonight!!" (He's in a play on Broadway now).
4. Does anyone else use Chrome and have trouble with 'Aw, Snap!' errors? I get them with almost any link to YouTube-- if I try to open it in a new tab, it crashes both the page with the link and the target page. On Facebook, e.g., I can play an embedded video as long as I play it in the FB feed, but get "aw snap" on both my FB page and the youtube page if I open it separately -- and also on any other tab I've opened from that FB page, at the same time, so I'll see a whole row of tabs that all say, "Aw, Snap!" Same if videos appear at the top of a Google search result. I don't like being pushed back onto Firefox. When I've read advice about how to deal with inappropriate "aw, Snap!" errors, it tends to say, "try turning off each of your extensions in turn..." Which is always, like, no thanks. I also don't perfectly love either Chromed Bird (the Twitter plugin I use on Chrome) or Echofon (the only I use in Firefox.) The former is nice because it gives you lots of columns and options, but it tends to throw up errors ("no more than 350 requests per hour" or something like that).
5. As always, I have DW codes if anyone needs them. I know a lot of people have been trying to back up LJs since the most recent troubles. Honestly, reading about the attacks on the Russian user base have made me more sympathetic to LJ than I've been in years. It's not putting it too strongly to say I hate LJ, as rule. It's not a principled stand, it's a visceral reaction to seeing all the ads plastered on my LJ and those of my friends, being stuck with them because I won't fork over money to a company that would ditch Pornish Pixies. I know, I know, I'm a Mac and you're a PC, and PCs have their good points, not least the simple fact that most people use them. It's nice to have a specific, visceral sympathetic feeling toward SUP & LJ, for a change, and for old time's sake. But it won't stop me from suggesting again that you might want to try DW. Back up your LJ. Try the crossposter. DW is a good company, and it's a good product. Here. I have codes.
2. So I coped with this trauma by having an extraordinarily indolent weekend in which I attempted to ward off loneliness with talking people in the electronic box. I happened on this article about films and TV shows (unjustly) killed by competition, and one of the first examples was Studio 60, killed by 30 Rock. I thought it was a very smart read on what was wrong with Studio 60, which I had actually liked quite a bit, namely that Aaron Sorkin couldn't write SNL sketches, like, at all. Just not funny (in that way), and they took up a lot of time. Anyway this prompted me to sit in bed and stream all 22 episodes consecutively.
There were quite a few I hadn't seen the first time, including the first few episodes. It prompted a few reactions. For one thing, I think it's impossible to really buy the premise, even though other things he's done, like The West Wing and The Social Network, would seem to strain credulity even more. The insight that this is at least partly the fault of the fake SNL was, I think, spot on, but I also felt acutely how unstressed these people seemed to be, with their high-stress jobs. And that made me wonder, was The West Wing like this too? It was, wasn't it? Why isn't everyone having a nervous breakdown all the time? OK, technically they abused drugs and messed up relationships and stuff. But they didn't really, like, yell at anyone, as a rule. They were pretty mellow. People wig out a hell of a lot more where I work, and it's not a big TV show let alone the White House. And combined with everyone being rich and successful and all finding love quickly due to early cancellation, there was this feeling of cushioned safety - I kept thinking of River Song saying, "Everyone lives."
Watching it all together, I could see how much Sorkin had set it up to be one story, and I wondered how long an arc it would have had if it had gotten another season. The story he sets up in episode one (which starts with Judd Hirsch's beautifully lampshaded Network outburst), about how Matt and Danny had been fired, and the thread about McCarthyism and blacklisting running through various episodes, and then finally the unpacking of that in flashbacks to the month after 9/11 in the multi-episode finale, bracketed by the endlessly ongoing war as it effects Tom, whose brother is taken hostage in Afghanistan - I thought that was pretty cleverly done, and much more unified than I expected - e.g. with the tiny, unnamed recurring character of the Standards and Practices enforcer. Although the fact that Tom's brother is rescued, without needing everyone to pitch in a couple million to hire the expensive private black ops people - like I said, everyone lives.
But the person living that I really wanted to mention was Jordan, because I realized something about the climax, where Jordan goes into the hospital before the baby is due because she can't feel it kick, and then she has preeclampsia and almost dies. This is a TOTAL shout-out, across Brad Whitford's (6? 7?) years on The West Wing, to what must have been his first major national TV moment, when he guest starred on a harrowing and brilliant season 1 episode of ER called "Love's Labor Lost" about a healthy young pregnant woman who comes into the ER with her husband (Brad W.) and about 30 hours later is dead, from pre-eclampsia and a series of bad medical decisions. Except this time, Sorkin wants, yes, everyone to live.
And that gives the whole show a weird feeling, because there are a lot of things going on that it really has no business being so smug about. I'm all for everyone living, but there's a pervasive aura of privilege and self-righteousness. The show's biggest theme is that the haters are wrong, that liberal Hollywood is not terrible but full of Heart, and the trauma of Amurrika hating on it in the Bush years -- and yet he seems so cluelessly indulgent of exactly the type of self-love that people despise Hollywood for.
3. Speaking of ER, I saw Anthony Edwards at BAM last week, when we went to MacBeth at the Harvey (which was good, though I didn't like Lady MacBeth). Not acting - he was in the audience, and I passed very close to him and there were smiles. He hadn't really aged at all; he looked great, very relaxed and like he was enjoying himself with his pals. I saw John Leguizamo last week, too, in Central Park. And then a week later I was on the same walk in Central Park, and I sat on a bench in this pretty area up near W 96th, not far from where I'd seen him, and overheard this woman saying, "I've got to go - John Leguizamo tonight!!" (He's in a play on Broadway now).
4. Does anyone else use Chrome and have trouble with 'Aw, Snap!' errors? I get them with almost any link to YouTube-- if I try to open it in a new tab, it crashes both the page with the link and the target page. On Facebook, e.g., I can play an embedded video as long as I play it in the FB feed, but get "aw snap" on both my FB page and the youtube page if I open it separately -- and also on any other tab I've opened from that FB page, at the same time, so I'll see a whole row of tabs that all say, "Aw, Snap!" Same if videos appear at the top of a Google search result. I don't like being pushed back onto Firefox. When I've read advice about how to deal with inappropriate "aw, Snap!" errors, it tends to say, "try turning off each of your extensions in turn..." Which is always, like, no thanks. I also don't perfectly love either Chromed Bird (the Twitter plugin I use on Chrome) or Echofon (the only I use in Firefox.) The former is nice because it gives you lots of columns and options, but it tends to throw up errors ("no more than 350 requests per hour" or something like that).
5. As always, I have DW codes if anyone needs them. I know a lot of people have been trying to back up LJs since the most recent troubles. Honestly, reading about the attacks on the Russian user base have made me more sympathetic to LJ than I've been in years. It's not putting it too strongly to say I hate LJ, as rule. It's not a principled stand, it's a visceral reaction to seeing all the ads plastered on my LJ and those of my friends, being stuck with them because I won't fork over money to a company that would ditch Pornish Pixies. I know, I know, I'm a Mac and you're a PC, and PCs have their good points, not least the simple fact that most people use them. It's nice to have a specific, visceral sympathetic feeling toward SUP & LJ, for a change, and for old time's sake. But it won't stop me from suggesting again that you might want to try DW. Back up your LJ. Try the crossposter. DW is a good company, and it's a good product. Here. I have codes.