2 or 3 Things I Know About Her: 13 Thoughts on Ke$ha

1.) When trying to sum up this year, when reflecting on “what it all meant”, when trying to find one piece of pop culture ephemera to encapsulate the state of affairs in America circa 2010 there are many directions you go could: The now forever intertwined twin towers of Taylor Swift and Kanye West. The twitter explosion. The Social Network and Mark Zuckerberg. Lady Gaga. The Old Spice guy. The undead. But to me, one figure towers above them all in their social significance. A figure who started the year as a joke, became a supernova-like force, and now is already fading into the ether from whence she came. An “artist” who was both born and killed off as a cultural force in the course of a year, not just because of their lack of talent and versatility, but because they so embodied 2010 that they could not exist outside of it. A person who twenty years from now will be lucky to be a pop cultural footnote, but who will in fact encapsulate and symbolize more of what the experience of being alive and in this country these past 12 months was like than any historian could ever hope to be able to convey. Because as is often the case with pop culture, long after the specifics and the details fade their essence remains. We may not know anything about what life was actually like in the 1920s and could name off the top of our heads only a very few of the key cultural figures of the period, but we all have an idea what it was like to be alive at that time. We can’t tell you who specifically sang its songs, but we know what they sounded like. And so it is with our age as well. Long after humanity has forgotten exactly who P. Diddy is they will still be able to relate to the essence of waking up feeling like him. And long after the name Ke$ha has ceased to haunt the nightmares of our collective unconscious, the popularity of her music on our pop charts this year will likely, more than any other cultural force that 2010 produced, best define the year that was in Pop Culture America.

2.) If nothing else, Ke$ha’s popularity this year has produced one great new term:
“Keshy” (adj.) a combination of catchy and trashy
ex: That new Pussycat Dolls song is really keshy

3.) Speaking of dumb terms, can we talk for a moment about the line “my steeze is gonna be affected if I keep it up like a love sick crackhead”? (Strangely “steeze” is not in my spell check.)

The urban dictionary defines steeze as “a combination of style and ease; straight up easy flow and mad unique style. You either got it or you don’t.”

I’m not “urban” so I’m no steeze expert, but if I may, I’d like to elaborate a bit on my understanding of the term. As I see it steeze is a fighting back against the metro-sexual crowd and the trying-too-hard bunch. Because it’s not trying at all. It’s DIY, emphasis on the Y. It’s not engaging at all with style or trends or fashion or the culture at large. It’s our default setting when we pop out of the womb. It’s what’s inside each of us. (Provided that, you know, it is.) It’s what makes some old bed sheets a dress and adorning yourself in craft supplies “accessorizing”. And it’s the perfect term for our economically depressed, lazy, and sedentary times. And it is of course one that Ke$ha pulls off with great élan.

So please don’t make her be too interested in real meaningful human connection with you because then she might have to try.

And that sounds exhausting.

4.) Is Ke$ha the most authentic pop star of all time? Although she lives in a corner of the music industry built almost entirely on artifice, there’s seemingly nothing fake or contrived about Ke$ha. Sure the dumb, trashy, party girl thing is a marketing hook, but it also appears to be completely genuine. From everything I’ve ever read or heard or seen (yes, I did do research for this) Ke$ha the person is really what she seems, or at least pretty close to it. Sure she wasnt born with glitter on her face, but I feel pretty confident that she would be wearing it whether she was a pop star or not. She may be selling a specific image and lifestyle, but it is, from all appearances, the lifestyle she really lives. The Rolling Stones could trash a hotel room, sleep with groupies, get hammered every night, and then let their music reflect that, but name a modern mainstream pop star who could do the same, especially a female one. Madonna perhaps, but she was always chasing trends, trying to stay relevant, constantly reinventing herself. I’d be shocked though if Ke$ha ever reinvents herself. Because she never invented herself in the first place. She just was who she was and that person happened to be something the zeitgeist could embrace. And when the zeitgeist moves on, as it almost by definition always does, I feel pretty sure that Ke$ha wont chase it. She’s just gonna keep doing what it is she does audience or market trends be damned. She’s not going to be doing MTV Unplugged (if that was still a thing) or making an art rock album with Grizzly Bear. She’s just gonna keep making overly dumb dance music about partying and boys and having fun. And if that’s not what people in the future want to listen to in their flying cars with their robot maids, then fuck it.

Ke$ha’s success may be an accident, a coincidence, a case of right person right place right time, but it's hard to say it isn’t founded on something real. And is that in its own way a breakthrough? A step forward? Is Ke$ha a trailblazer? Is she deserving of respect? It’s a moralish conundrum. But at least it’s a real one.

5.) Ke$ha may not win a lot of awards for her contributions to music this year. And by “a lot” I mean “any”. But in the greatest year ever for so-bad-they’re-good lyrics nothing even came close to “don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat / just show me where your dicks at”. I mean we’re dealing with a year where “I get ten thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs” isn’t even cracking my top ten. And yet that Ke$ha lyric is so head and shoulders “above” anything else that I’m almost tempted to say that nothing in history is ever going to be able to top it. Although lord knows Will.I.Am is trying.

6.) While we’re talking about dumb lyrics, has anything ever made less sense than “kick ‘em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger”? Even in his younger sexual prime I don’t think anyone was really that into Mick Jagger for his physical appearance. He was a supremely confident and charismatic rock front man who oozed sex, carnal energy, and aggression, sure. But I don’t think the particulars of his physical appearance were exactly what he was most known for. Still, even if in theory he was a major looker back in the day, he’s now 70 years old. If a guy who looked EXACTLY like present day Mick Jagger approached Ke$ha at a bar and offered to buy her a drink I can almost guarantee you she would laugh in his face and/or be more than a little creeped out. When people say that leather is out I’m assuming they don’t just mean for clothing, but for skin as well. Maybe I’m missing something and hooking up with anorexic looking 67-year-old men with faces that look like they’re melting is all the rage, but I’m pretty sure that “we kick ‘em to the curb if they look anything even remotely like Mick Jagger” would be WAY more apt.

7.) Some people worry that Ke$ha will make young people think it’s cool to party all the time and drink and take drugs. Some people worry about the implications her popularity has on the future of intelligence and education and enlightened discourse. Some people worry that kids are going to start thinking its acceptable to walk around dressed in torn up garbage bags. Those might all be valid concerns, but me, I mostly just worry about her bad influence on our kids’ dental hygiene. I mean brushing your teeth with a bottle of Jack is not only unhealthy but outright dangerous. And if we don’t fight back against Ke$ha’s message, pretty soon we’re going to be faced with an entire generation of people with some pretty serious gum disease.

8.) The thoroughly bland and uneventful Rolling Stone profile of Ke$ha from a few months back (which I can’t link to because Rolling Stone still operates as though it’s 1972) posits that she is always making edgy and controversial comments, giving as an example her statement: “I like wiener”. Which indeed is very cutting edge and shocking. To a fifth grader. And that’s the thing - our standards for what we find outrageous and edgy have fallen to such a degree that bad fashion sense and studied stupidity now qualify as “edge”.

We used to fight things in this country. The system. The man. The safe, the plastic, and the status quo. We had real outrage and real sense of purpose. Thirty years ago someone like Ke$ha would have had place in the music scene. She could have been a punk. Her lack of polish and “talent” would have been an active choice and a statement. A statement against “the way things are”. It would have made us think and question our values and see the world in a new way. But as pop culture has ostensibly “loosened”, what with our sex and violence and foul language more omnipresent on the TV and what not, things in the actual day-to-day culture of life have actually grown more safe and provincial. Hell, even a decade ago there were people on MTV like Marilyn Manson who played with ideas of gender identity subversion and nihilism. Who would have thought I would ever be yearning for the days when nihilism was seen as an activist worldview? But I do, because even Marilyn Manson could never exist in anywhere close to the mainstream today, let alone The Sex Pistols. Now “I like wiener” is edgy and outré and punk bands have musicals on Broadway. And so instead of fearing that musicians are going to destroy our culture, topple our government, and forever change our safe placid way of life, now the only outrage they generate is “ugh, her music is stupid and she dresses tackily” or “man, he seems really egotistical and says crazy things on twitter”. And that seems to be enough for us. Is this the depths to which modernity has sunk us? Has the perpetual outrage machine really worn us down to this? No wonder the war in Afghanistan drags on with no end in sight…

9.) If in Europe Ke$ha’s name is not instead K€sha then that might be the greatest missed opportunity in branding history.

10.) I don’t know that Ke$ha’s love is my drug, but I’m pretty sure that it’s my syphilis.

11.) What’s with people keeping their best songs until their later singles? First, “Paparazzi” was the fourth single released from The Fame, and then “Your Love is my Drug” was held out until after “TiK ToK” and “Blah Blah Blah” had been released as singles off of Animal even though its CLEARLY her best song. And I’m using pretty much every word in that last sentence very loosely.

12.) If it’s true that every generation gets the artists it deserves then we truly have earned Ke$ha. She doesn’t write her own music, play any instruments, or even sing. And in our era of famous-for-being-famous celebutants, it’s fitting that arguably the biggest pop star of the moment is a singer who doesn’t sing. An artist who adds almost nothing to her art. A “talent” with no real discernable talents. She is exactly the pop star America deserves. She is our Warholian Age of Fame worldview sprung to life. She is what we think about when we don’t think at all. She is the us that has trouble sitting through YouTube videos because they’re too long, considers twitter heavy reading, and zones out every night in front of reality TV. She is us as we spend considerably more time reading celebrity gossip blogs than we do reading about the relief efforts in Haiti. Ke$ha is the vapid id to our Lady Gaga super-ego. She is who we R.

She is our steez.

13.) I like your beard.

The Quest for Aqua: My August in Spain

Did I go to Spain by myself for two weeks in August? Yes I did. Did I spend most of my time there writing down my thoughts in my omnipresent pocket journal? Yes I did. Is it now November and I am just now getting around to sharing those thoughts? Yes it is. So sue me. I’ve been busy okay. But at long last I’ve finally been able to transcribe a sort of “best of” on the ol’ internet here. But be warned: It might take you longer to read all this stuff than my actual trip lasted.

(By the way, I wrote a not insignificant chunk of this in the courtyard of a 12^th century Moorish palace. Where do you do your blogging?)

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*I think there should be a TV show where they pit the wildest, craziest, most unhinged American college kids they can find against average Madrid residents chosen at random from the phone book in events like “drinking”, “staying out late”, “partying” and “general craziness”. I’d put all my money on the Madrilenos.

*If you’re eating dinner before 9:00 in Spain then you might as well wear a sign that says “I’m an American and I chose to stick to my normal lunch time and am therefore now hungry because I can’t be bothered to adapt to a foreign culture”

*You want some fucking pictures of Jesus? The Prado Museum in Madrid has got em.

(Speaking of which, were you lonely at home around August 11^th? That’s because all the Americans in the world were at The Prado. Seriously, it was like an apple pie NASCAR convention up in there.)

*Things I learned while looking at Picasso’s "Guernica":

-It is large

-War is hard

*While looking at mid-20^th century Spanish art I was struck by the fact that probably 95% of Americans have either forgotten or never knew in the first place that just forty years ago Spain was a closed country with no foreign relations or contact with the world outside its borders. I was struck by the same thing when watching Japan, our friend, ally, and worshipper of our culture, portrayed as our sworn enemy on The Pacific. Makes you wonder how our children and our children’s children will view Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

*All you need to know about Palacio Real is that there is a room in it made entirely of porcelain. Is it a room of great importance you ask? No. It’s simply The Porcelain Room. Its entire purpose is to be made of porcelain. That’s its whole reason for being.

*As a follow up of sorts to that last point, I think the reason old buildings and art are so intricately detailed has more to do with how bored people used to be than anything else. I mean, of course people were willing to spend years intricately detailing thousands of individual tiles, what else did they have going on? The new season of The Bachelor wasn’t going to be on for at least 650 more years.

*I think the word “amazed” came from the experience of being in a really awesome maze.

*I feel very strongly that Toledo is the Venice of Spain. The similarities are uncanny. Well other than the canals. But who notices those in Venice anyway?

*Why do we take pictures?

To capture the uncaptureable.

To describe the undescribeable.

To share that which cannot be shared.

Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but they’re still worth very little. We spend so much time on our vacations, at places, during events, engaged in a futile activity. Yet we always try and we always will because to not do so is to admit defeat to the enormity and awesome power of the universe. And lord knows we can’t let the universe win.

*Ways to know you’re not in America:

-You see a man with a small child on his shoulders drinking a massive glass of sangria at a street fair after midnight on a Thursday night and no one seems troubled or remotely concerned.

-Two 60-plus year old women walk into a jazz club at 1:00am on a Tuesday and each almost immediately start chugging their own mug of beer.

-The uber-nerdy looking girl with frizzy hair, thick glasses, and high-water mom jeans can dance as good or better than Michael Jackson.

*There’s a very unique kind of awkward experienced when you start speaking Spanish to someone in Spain only to find out that they only speak French. What, my whole ONE other language isn’t enough for you?

(By the way, if you want to feel bad about your language skills, try talking to a trilingual homeless guy.)

*And speaking of knowing another language - were there times I ordered things in cafes that maybe I didn’t want simply because I had misunderstood the server or couldn’t totally read and understand the menu? That might have happened once or twice. But if in those situations I had at any point explained that to the server then they would have known that I didn’t totally understand the Spanish language and that therefore I was just another ugly American who wasn’t fluent in any other languages just like they thought I was. And therefore I would not have been able to heal the rift between America and the rest of the world, and then eventually there would be nuclear war. So, okay, maybe I ate some strange cuts of meat I didn’t necessarly want; at least we wont have nuclear war.

*How many times did I feel the urge to reach into my pocket for a phone that wasn’t there? 800,000,000. And that’s an exact count.

*Popular Spanish joke: To be or estar, that is the question

*Several times on the trip I saw places called "Museo de Jamon". Either something is lost in translation or ham is much more interesting than I realize.

*The Last Airbender hadn’t come out there yet. Should I have warned them? I decided against it because I was so impressed that the marketing department was able to make the cast so Spanish looking on the poster. On a related note, did you know that Selma Hayek was the lead of Grown Ups?

*Anyone who’s traveled with me knows that there’s nothing I love more than old churches. Which considering my views on organized religion is seemingly rather strange. But as I’ve always said, it’s because not only are churches usually the most beautiful and culturally important buildings in any given town, but because they’re also the best places to really feel history. And I think I’ve figured out why that is. It’s because churches are the only places of historical interest left that haven’t been “museumified”. You know how when you visit anywhere that’s even remotely touristy that place has become so overrun with signs and displays and exhibits that it no longer has the feel of authenticity? Like for example when Anne Frank was hiding out in her attic it didn’t have a bunch of plaques and shit everywhere. But when the Spanish royal family met with Magellan on his way around the world from The Cathedral of Seville, the chapel where they did that looked and felt almost exactly as it does today. And that’s not just because its still a functioning house of worship but because, just generally speaking, it ain’t kosher to fuck with God’s house in any way. So that’s the (reductive) reason I have such a hard on for temples to the baby Jesus.

*Speaking of which….

Come on Cathedral de Valencia, it’s like you’re not even trying! Where is your choir chamber decorated by one of Spain’s great painters and filled with individually carved figures made out of rare wood that indicate each and every seat number? Where is your ridiculously ornate organ made solely from precious metals? Where is your room that serves no other purpose than to house diamond encrusted treasures? The fucking Holy Grail and an old royal chapel? Is that all you got? You might as well slap Jesus in the face.

*And while we're here Valencia, renaming all your streets in Valencio is annoying and confusing. I know you're trying to reclaim your language and cultural heritage from years of oppression and death and blah blah blah but your maps are now hard to follow for visitors who are in your city for a single day. So you should really think about that.

*I’ve realized that my new goal in life is to be the kind of person who can pull off white pants.

*Other realizations I had while in Spain:

-Location is a temporary condition

-For better or worse tomorrow always follows today

-If you’re trying to get away from swarms of flying insects that have been attacking you all day, a dried out riverbed immediately after a rainstorm is not the best place to do that

*I’m going to start a restaurant where you can’t order a main course, you can only order small appetizer-sized portions, only I’ll price each of them between $8-$12 so you’ll spend $40 on a meal of snacks that won’t leave you feeling fully satisfied. I’ll make millions!

*While we're on the subject...by far the most popular word used in hostels in Spain is "tapas". Everyone is obsessed with saying tapas. And, sure, it’s a fun word to say, but it doesn’t mean some exotic type of cuisine. It just means "small portion". It indicates the exact same food you get as a main course, just a smaller potion of it. So all the hundreds of people in hostels who were saying things like "where can I get good tapas?" "where are there cheap tapas?" "where are all the tapas?" "tapas tapas of tapas" were basically only saying "where are the small portions of food?" Just sayin.

*Can someone who has stayed in a lot of hostels please explain to me the hanging out at the hostel bar thing. I guess it’s a cousin to hanging out at the hotel bar, which makes some sense if you’re staying in a boring city for work. But if you are paying money for the express purpose of traveling and experiencing a new place, then why are you sitting in a shitty windowless bar with strictly other tourists and no connection of any kind to the city at large. When I travel the main thing I want to do is get a real feel for the place and experience as many authentically local things as I can. And there are few things I can feel safer guaranteeing that locals NEVER do than going to a hostel in their own city and drinking at its bar. Plus, if I wanted to spend time in a small, cramped, dark space with too many people I could have just stayed in New York.

 

*When you think about it, The United States of America is a pretty terrible name for a country.

*As much as military time annoys me, I do have to admit that it is actually a better system. We Americans really can be such assholes what with our way of telling time that is unique to us and our measurement system that makes no sense and our temperature system where 32 is 0.

*Do people from other countries feel the need to represent their native country well while traveling abroad? For example, does a French person say to themselves while traveling “whatever I do, I need to be sure not to come off like a rude Frenchman”?

*I think applying spray-on deodorant is the easiest possible way of saying to people “You are hereby no longer required to take me seriously as a person”.

*The fact that when the walk signs turn green in Spain they also make a sound that can best be described as "someone shooting lasers at you" really put some urgency into my street crossings.

*Things I realized after the fact that I had mistakenly said in Spanish:

-“I’m very spicy”

-“Is this the hill where you use the bathroom?”

-“I would like one of the sandwiches traditional to your region”

-“I put the key in me”

*If you lived in Spain and your name was Cece you’d probably always think that someone was calling your name. And you’d slowly go insane.

*They say music transcends all nationalities, all cultures, all creeds. So apparently does waking up feeling like P. Diddy.

*Hey, you know what shockingly doesn’t sound good? A Spanish language cover of “The Reason” by Hoobastank

*How to know you’ve found the ghetto: when there’s a small child holding a baby and there are no adults in sight.

*Thought had while cursing in a church: Why does the Lord care if we take his name in vain? That’s a little sensitive for an all-powerful deity don’t you think? And is it just his name? What if I said “damn the all-powerful creator of the universe”? Am I allowed to take him in vain conceptually? And is this really one of the ten most important rules for life?

*If you have some free time on your hands you should really vote for Granada to be European Cultural Capital 2016. I don’t know what that is or what it means or even if it’s a real thing, I just know that they REALLY want to be it. Like a lot. Like to the point where I’m a little embarrassed for them. So go on the internet and vote for them. Because they could really use it apparently. Plus their city is utterly charming and could use some more attention.

*In Spain there appears to be a very strong regional preference for certain beers. The ones I was able to pin down:

Madrid – Mahout

Seville – Cruzcampo

Barcelona – Estrella Damm (although San Miguel was a close second)

*Legitimate questions:

How often do Spanish people actually eat paella?

Why are there different electrical outlets in different countries?

Why are there different “regions” for DVDs?

How did the American restaurant tipping system develop?

Why in European bars do you turn the beer taps rather than pull them down?

How do foreign comic book nerds feel about Captain America?

*Observations had while watching basketball in Spain
-Rather than calling them "field goals" and "three pointers" they call them "tries for two" and "triples". A little wordy perhaps but I like it.
-Since they're so used to watching futbol they haven't figured out yet what to do with stoppages in time. During timeouts rather than go to commercial they broadcast the coach's huddle, mic-ed up and everything. And the audience seems to think that what the coach has to say is VERY important. At the bar where I was watching the game some kid came in talking loudly during a timeout and the patrons all hushed him so they could listen to the coach. It was adorable.
-I'm pretty sure if Pau Gasol ran for president of Spain he would win in a landslide

*Sometimes you worry about your future, your life. You want stability, security, success. You want to be taken care of, provided for, loved. You want to understand the infinite wisdom of the universe. And sometimes all you want is a strawberry Fanta.

*Lastly, after returning from Spain I moved to Los Angeles. I remember getting picked up at the airport the first night and feeling so full of excitement, of opportunity, so filled with the sense of holy shit I’m actually here, I’m actually doing this. This place I have imagined and dreamed about and planned for - this moment it is actually here. I didn’t know what to expect at first and everything from going to the grocery store to walking down the street felt new and exciting. And now a few months into living here I still love it and feel energized by it, but the feeling of newness and of the unknown feels like a million years ago. And part of me mourns that I can never not know this place ever again. I can never look forward to coming here in the same way again because I will always know what being here is. And that’s something I found myself thinking time after time in Spain. After reading about every city for months in books, imagining what they would be like, going to sleep at night dreaming of them, I would emerge from a train station or an airport or a bus station and see this city unfold before me for the first time and I would be giddy with anticipation. Every turn around every new corner was an exciting new adventure. But by the end of the day, when I could find my way around without a map and my feet hurt from walking so much and I had passed by the same plaza for the third time, I would experience the most common source of existential depression while on vacation: the sense that I can never not know this place ever again. And that’s the tragedy of knowing is that you can never unknow. The old can never be new again. You’ll always know what’s around that corner. You’ll never be able to erase from your mind the Albayzin at dusk so you can experience it again for the first time. You’ll always know how that book ends. Luckily life is long. And the world is large.

Until next time…

Dear New York,

Hey, how are you? How’s it goin?
You been in any good movies recently?....
…Okay this is awkward, and not just because I’m writing a letter to a non-anthropomorphic entity. It’s because we’ve been through so much together and because I care about you so much that this is so hard to say. Or to write. Whatever. The thing is, I want to see other cities. And by “see other cities” I mean see one other city.
That isn’t you.
What I’m trying to say is...I want to break up. I’m just not so good with words okay? Which is just one of the many reasons I’m leaving you - You were always smarter than me. And you belittle me all the time and make me feel like I’m not good enough. And you make me angry. Oh boy do you make me angry. Just the other day you almost made me shove some old lady down the stairs because she was walking too slowly. Which probably had less to do with her actively trying to slow me down because she doesn’t understand that I have places, VERY IMPORTANT PLACES TO BE, and more to do with the fact that she was walking slowly because, well, she’s fucking old.

See, you you’ve turned me into someone I’m not. Someone I don’t like very much. Like, I swore I would never be one of those people who was defined by my relationship, but whenever I’m somewhere without you, you’re pretty much all I talk about. I’m sure I annoy people with how much I ramble on about you like you’re the only thing in my life worth talking about. Like you’re SO interesting. Like I’m SO much better than everyone else because I have a better city than they do. A city that is beautiful and charming and interesting and treats me well. But you know what? You’re not always as charming as you think you are, and honestly, you don’t treat me all that well. You rain on me, you hurt my feet, and you lie to me. Like when you claim there’s a sick passenger on your train, but really I know that you just don’t know how to fucking operate a simple mass-transit system. And not only can I not trust you, but you make me actively paranoid. Whenever any store clerk smiles at me or even acknowledges my existence I glance around everywhere, certain that I’m being punked. You’ve made me think that basic human decency is some sort of malicious prank. And yeah, sure, you inspired Annie Hall, and “Rhapsody in Blue”, and The Godfather, but, you know, you also inspired Small Time Crooks and The Real World: Brooklyn and the career of Ja Rule. So maybe you should stop thinking you’re all that. There are other fish in the sea okay? Other fruit on the tree. Other geographical locations on the map.

In fact, maybe this isn’t the best time to tell you this, but you’ll see the pictures on facebook eventually, so I might as well just tell you now. I’ve kind of been seeing someone else. Their name is Los Angeles. And it’s actually pretty serious. In fact I think we’re gonna move in together. Now, I don’t mean to hurt you. I really don’t. And I know you’d rather I rebounded with someone nice and unthreatening city like Chicago or Denver or Philadelphia, but this isn’t some rebound thing it’s pretty serious.

Now look, there’s no way any city will ever be able to hold a candle to you. You’re the best city I’ll ever be with, I understand that. But for all the wonderful things you have - unexpected adventures, wild nights out, a rooftop party with friends looking out over an amazing view - I know that these things rarely happen anymore. What once was fresh has gotten stale. And one night of passion a month isn’t enough to keep a relationship going. Sometimes no matter how much love you might feel for someone, circumstances, life, and reality get in the way. Things run their course.

Just today I was walking down the street, not paying any attention to anything as usual, annoyed with all the fucking tourists around when suddenly I looked up and I saw this building that a young man was taking a picture of. It was just a random building, nothing special at first glance, but then I looked at it harder and I saw it with different eyes. Younger eyes. And it took me back to a different time. The time when we first fell in love. When every building and every street and every moment felt so magical and alive. Walking around every day felt like a dream. The love I felt for you was almost surreal. I couldn’t believe this place was actually mine. Sometimes your beauty would literally stop me in my tracks. When you weren’t around all I wanted to do was be with you, and when you were around you automatically made everything better by the mere fact of your presence. Before I found you I felt so misunderstood, so alone, so incomplete, so out of place. But once I found the comfort of your arms I felt so alive, so at home. You understood me. You got what I was about. You saved my life. And I’ll be eternally grateful to you for that. But people grow and people change. And you start to see the cracks in the facade. The things you put on a pedestal become real and you have to deal with the reality instead of the fantasy.

And I looked at the man taking the picture of the building. This building that was old and interesting and utterly fascinating to this man. And I knew how he felt. I had been that person. I remembered what that was like. But that’s all it was - just a memory. Because I looked at that building and all I saw was a building. A building that was blocking my view of the sun.

And I thought, how could something that once was so powerful to me leave me feeling completely numb? How could something that was once so beautiful now simply be an annoyance? Is this how all love works? Does nothing last? Is lifelong monogamy valid or even possible? Is this why I never like to start things, because I know if I never start them then they never have to end?

Frankly all this thinking gave me a headache. And that’s why I’m moving to LA. Because they don’t have existential crises in LA. They don’t have much of anything really. Other than 3D movies about outer space. Well that and cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine. Which is great because I hear it’s delicious. Also, I have no idea how cocaine works. But the point is LA is a simpler place. And I need somewhere simple after all the drama of you and me. I need somewhere where I can just lay around doing nothing all day. Somewhere I can stretch my legs and truly relax. Somewhere I can get Mexican food that’s not made by Asian people.

And don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll see you again. We’ll keep in touch. And I’m sure I’ll hear stories about you from friends. And, I’m not gonna lie, I’ll probably stalk you a little bit on the internet. But I know in the end, although I’ll always value what we had, we will be better off apart.

So don’t worry about me. I’m sure I’ll be just fine with my new love.

And I’m not too worried about you moving on either.

You always have been quite the heartbreaker.

Love always,
Andy

My Month of Soccer

The World Cup is the greatest thing that mankind has ever created. And if you disagree with that statement then you are wrong. And you probably lead a sad grey passionless existence in which you pray every day for the sweet release of death.

Or maybe you just have an actual life.
Whatever.

Point is that over the past month I have experienced every possible human emotion at least ten times over. I lost sleep, hair, and my voice. I drank copious amounts of beer, hugged and slapped hands with complete strangers and got so filled with tension that I seriously worried that my heart might explode. And my level of soccer knowledge went from “I hope that one guy can kick the ball into the net soon” to “it’s the 85th minute and if they don’t fucking switch to a goddamn 4-3-3 soon then no amount of stoppage time is going to get them the equalizer”. But just enough knowledge of soccer to be completely obnoxious is not all I picked up over the past month. Theres more...

Things I Learned During The World Cup:

*US sports teams names are lame. The Falcons? The Eagles? The Reds? Try The Super Eagles, The Indomitable Lions, and La Furija Roja (The Furious Red). And it's not just the addition of adjectives either. The Greek team is called The Pirate Ship. That’s the greatest name for anything ever. Come on America, step your game up.

(Second place for best name for anything ever? Nigeria has a President named Goodluck Jonathan. No, I'm not making that up)

*Cardiologists must love The World Cup.

*Despite the success of this World Cup I feel certain that South Africa is never, ever, EVER going to be allowed to host a worldwide sports competition again. (Thanks a lot vuvuzelas)
Speaking of which…

*The amount of World Cup you have watched can be best defined by which of these quotes sums up your feelings on hearing a chorus of vuvuzelas:
1.) “What is vuvuzela?”
2.) “Vuvuzelas are the worst, most obnoxious thing in the history of the world!”
3.) “Oh, are thousands of people blowing on vuvuzelas at the moment? I didn’t even notice.”
4.) “I’ve started sleeping under a bees’ nest because I’m no longer able to be at peace in the world without the sweet dulcet tones of vuvuzela wafting through the air.”

*When you’re watching a sporting event that is not the World Cup if you yell out “come on, that’s a clear yellow card!” people will look at you funny.

*Apparently the players for Paraguay have no problem looking like escaped convicts from a jail for clowns.

*It's good to know that no matter what our differences might be, all nations in the world are united in our hatred of the French.

*Soccer is now officially the indie rock of American sports.

*Musically speaking all national anthems pretty much sound they same. And they all kind of suck.

*Both the best and the worst thing about soccer is watching a guy writhing in pain get carried off the pitch on a stretcher only to hop off and be perfectly fine the second he gets to the sideline.

*Whoever thought of the idea to give the New Zealand All-Whites an almost all black uniform is my new hero.

*Spain's David Villa is the first person in history to successfully pull off the soul patch.

*USA is without a doubt the most easily chant-able of all the country names in existence. Unless of course there is a BeatL.A.istan or a Republic of YankeesSuck somewhere I don’t know about.

*There are black people in Switzerland.

*There really need to be more occasions wherein it’s culturally acceptable to drink in a bar at 10am on a weekday.

*It's hard to take a man seriously when his name is Kaka.

*The World Cup can teach you a lot about your neighbors. For instance I had no idea so many people of Serbian descent live in my neighborhood.

*If you ever visit Portugal don’t ever accidentally graze past anyone on the street or they will fall into a heap on the ground and writhe around in agony like they have been shot. They are a fragile people. Also, they suck.

*Ian Darke is the Gus Johnson of soccer. But neither of them have anything on this guy.

*Soccer terminology is so much more sophisticated and classy than the language we use in American sports. Teams aren’t "playing well" they are "displaying good quality". The ball doesn’t get "stolen" it gets "dispossessed". And I'm not even taking into account the time an announcer called the Paraguayan defense "obdurate".

*Diego Forlan is very good at soccer. He is also very good at looking like the love child of Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn.

*Like the wannabe pseudo-hipster I am I have really fallen in love with soccer jerseys. (Or kits I believe they're called?)

My five favorites of the World Cup:
5.) Spain - Away
4.) Brazil - Home
3.) Mexico - Away
2.) Portugal - Home (which I would have bought if I didn’t hate Portugal so much)
1.) Australia - Home (which I might or might not have made a special trip to Niketown to buy)

*And finally, with all due respect to Paul the Octopus, Diego Maradona, the French team refusing to practice, and the heroic run of Ghana, the thing that will always be the highlight of this World Cup, this past month, this whole summer is of course Donovan's goal vs. Algeria. I will remember it for the rest of my life and it made every hour I spent watching these games totally worth it. So thanks for everything soccer. I'll see you again in four years.

Zombie People

Hey do you like reading things I write? Then maybe you'll like watching things I act in. A friend of mine is trying to get his movie off the ground and we hope to film it in the fall. Its a great project with some great people invloved. You should really check out the site: Zombie People. Thanks.

What Would David Simon Do: How To Make Television Without Getting LOST

“The ultimate goal has to be story” - David Simon on television

“This isn’t Lost. We have no idea where we’re going” – Chuck Lorre on Two and Half Men

Now that Lost has finally ended and we’ve spent the past few days analyzing and critiquing and opining about the finale we can finally step back and look at the series as a whole. And though we're all still sifting through our feelings and our thoughts, and though they are this point still subject to change as the days and the weeks and the years go by, I think we each have begun coming to our own semi-definite conclusions about the series as a whole and our feelings on it. And out of all the thousands and thousands of words that have been written about Lost I think my feelings are, at this point, best summed up by a quote from Noel Murray of The Onion AV Club:

“When you think back on the details of Lost—when you toss them around in your head, as opposed to watching them on the screen—the writers have really answered most of what’s important that they answer, to tell the story they mean to tell. But when Bearded Jack gets a dramatic close-up and shouts, “We have to go back!” it’s only natural for we fans to expect there to be more to that backstory than there ultimately turned out to be. And I could come up with dozens more examples (at least), where the intensity of the tease was out of proportion with the ultimate reveal. But that’s the nature of the show Lindelof and Cuse chose to make. They wanted to make the best use of the commercial breaks and the episodic nature of television, and the result was a show that was more viscerally exciting and entertaining, but often wildly inconsistent as sustained narrative storytelling....What made for an entertaining hour often worked against telling a cohesive six year story.”

I thought the finale itself showcased this quality of Lost almost more than any other episode. It was a hugely entertaining and emotional piece of television, but in the end it spent nearly half its running time on something that had absolutely nothing to do with the main storyline of the show, and it doesn’t really hold up to any close scrutiny as a work of narrative fiction. And thats a shame. Because Lost, when it premiered, seemed to offer a new type of show. An involved complex new type of story that TV had never before really attempted. All the pieces, it seemed to promise, were part of some sort of epic, sprawling narrative whole. And while it was a thrilling and well-done ride, and one that I'm glad I went on, the ultimate irony was that in the end Lost was just television as usual. It may have had a different wrapper - a wonderful, beautifully done, exciting new wrapper - but on the inside it was more of the same old thing.

The show we fell in love with and the things that that show focused on and wanted us to care about - Dharma, the hatch, The Others, infertility, etc. - ultimately had almost nothing to do with the show that we just watched go off the air. And that’s because for all the bells and whistles, for its complex plot and mythology, the show ultimately didn’t know what story it wanted to tell. But that’s the thing with television. Story always takes a backseat to entertainment.

I was just hoping maybe this time it would be different.

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“We don’t start a story unless we know where it’s going” – David Simon

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If The Sopranos finale was like watching a friend get killed in a random drive-by shooting, then the end of Lost was like watching a friend finally succumb to a long battle with cancer. The friend in both cases was story. And the cancer was the American television system.

I don’t blame the creators of Lost for becoming infected with the cancer. They ate right, exercised, had regular check ups. They did everything they could. The fact that 75% of Lost wound up having almost nothing to do with the main plot, and the fact that the story that was ultimately told had at least three seasons of unnecessary padding on it, wasn’t really Darlton’s fault. They did what exactly was expected of them in the paradigm of American television production. And therefore I cant lay all the blame at their feet.

We're also largely to blame.

It was all very much our fault.

The fault of the way we view television as a medium and what we expect from it.

And the fault of the way television in this country is produced.

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"Well, we weren’t cynical about having been given ten, 12, 13 hours—whatever we had for any season from HBO. All of that was an incredible gift. The Godfather narrative, even including the third film, the weak one, is like… what? Nine hours? And look how much story they were able to tell. We were getting more than that for each season. So goddamn it, you better have something to say. That sounds really simple, but it’s actually a conversation that I don’t think happens on a lot of serialized drama. Certainly not on American television. I think that a lot of people believe that our job as TV writers is to get the show up as a franchise and get as many viewers, as many eyeballs, as we can, and keep them. So if they like x, give them more of x. If they don’t like y, don’t do as much y."
- David Simon

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Almost since the beginning television has been viewed primarily as a diversion. As merely a source of entertainment. An opiate of the people if you want to get extreme about it. In many cases nothing more than background noise or a distraction. You always hear that watching too much television is bad for you. You never hear that about watching too many movies or reading too many books. And as more and more people I know give up their televisions its becoming harder and harder for me to make a case in its defense. Sure it’s entertaining, but is that entertainment any more than empty calories? Sure candy tastes great but is it essential to my life? Does television add anything of real value?

Now of course all television doesnt need to provide me with rich fullfilling susbstance any more than all movies or all books or all theater or all of anything does. The problem with television isn’t really that mindless shows predicated around simply the idea of providing entertainment exist. It’s that they are all that exists. It’s as if in the film industry every movie released was a potential blockbuster. Not that there’s anything wrong with a big blockbuster if it’s done right. But there is also room for things like Greenberg, or Please Give, or Solitary Man just to name a few very recent examples that have no prayer of ever getting a large audience yet are still made anyway. Television shows like that are few and far between. And even when show creators attempt to create stories like that, they almost always wind up failing in the end.

Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Friday Night Lights - there are many great shows on the air now that are striving for excellence. For complex storytelling, for complicated characters, for interesting plots. And they are all on the air even though their audiences might not be large because of the quality of their product. But ultimately each of them will (if they haven’t already) start introducing new characters without knowing what to do with them, begin plotlines that will go nowhere, introduce ideas that they don't know how to effectively develop, and generally do whatever they can to keep people watching whether it ultimately serves the greater story or not. They will eventually become less and less great until such time when their creators finally feel that they have completely run out of ideas or they lose enough of their audience, at which point they will go off the air. How do I know this to be true? Because it always has been. Always. (Almost). Lost seemed to promise that it would be different. But in the end it wasn’t. It ran into the same problems that all teh afermention shows will eventually run into as well despite the brilliance and best intentions of their creators. So what if it’s not the shows? What if it’s the system?

What if there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium?

Look for example at the creation of Lost. An ABC executive wanted to have a show about people trapped on island. That was the whole idea. And then he commissioned people to develop that idea. And thus Lost was born. That story has been told a lot in the past few weeks as an interesting antidote. But it’s really a story that best illustrates the entire problem with American television development. It’s concerned with ideas, not with story. With concept not with content.

So is it any wonder that in an industry predicated on pitching ideas that the supposed most complex narrative of the medium wound up being nothing more than a bunch of interesting ideas strung together?

No one ever stopped to ask what all these ideas mean, what they all add up to, just will they engage the audience. “Should we tell this story” and “what is this story”, were revealed in the end to have been given a backseat to “can we tell this story in an interesting and entertaining way”? And though Lost had a set end date, that didn’t come until the show started hemorrhaging viewers. And even then, the show went on far longer than it needed to tell the story that it ultimately wound up telling. And that’s because when a show is going well no one ever stops to ask should it continue, simply how can it continue. Sure this is a problem in all artistic mediums but it’s most endemic to American TV production.

But what would happen if someone completely rethought the very concept of how a television series is created and produced?

What kind of show would someone make if they knew nothing about how television was supposed to work?

What if there was another way?

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“We were not interested in sustaining a universe merely for the sake of continuing to have a show”
-David Simon

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One of my favorite books is Peter Biskand's Down and Dirty Pictures about the Hollywood revolution of the 1970s. A set of circumstances came about to create a major paradigm shift in the film industry and the types of stories that films could tell and how those stories were made. Blockbusters and spectacles and mindless entertainments weren’t abolished (in fact they ultimately became bigger than ever) but at last there was a system by which auteurs could fully realize the unique storytelling potential of the film medium and get these new types of stories made on their own terms and seen by audiences who were interested a better quality and more fulfilling product. And even if the movement ultimately imploded on itself, it paved the way for new types of movies to be made and for audiences to be able to change their expectations of what movies could be and possibly should be. It was a movement that seemed to come out of nowhere and happen almost overnight. But that isn’t entirely the case.

In 1940 a young man named Orson Welles who knew next to nothing about filmmaking decided to get many of his talented theater friends together to create a fictional movie about largely real people and real events. He wanted tell a story in a way that would only be possible in the specific medium of film. And in doing so he wanted to test its storytelling powers. And he wanted to use the tools of the medium in new and interesting ways. And he wanted to do it all on his terms. Combining concepts he had seen elsewhere and also inventing some new ones of his own he combined a fractured narrative structure with subtle acting, nuanced writing, and innovative lighting, camera angles, and visual compositions to tell a story in a way that only film could. It wasn’t a filmed play, or part of a serialized radio-style film anthology, or a film that played like a novel. It was something else entirely. It maximized the storytelling abilities of the still evolving new medium of film. And he had written, produced, and directed it himself all outside the traditional studio system. The movie was of course Citizen Kane, and it is generally accepted to be the greatest movie of all time. A title it holds not just because of its quality but because of the way it rewrote the rules of what a film could be and what the film medium could do. And ultimately the new rules it helped create were an inspiration and a large influence on the film revolution of the 1970’s. The auteurs of 70’s were only able to do what they did because Orson Welles had shown them not only how to do it, but that it could be done at all.

Which brings us, of course, to The Wire.

To anyone has ever seen The Wire (which really, at this point, should be all of you) it doesn’t seem like hyperbole to call it the greatest TV show of all time. In fact it would seem almost heretical to call it anything other than that. Because The Wire, it’s safe to say, is the Citizen Kane of television. It rewrote the rules of what a television show could be. It told a complicated and challenging story that at all times knew exactly where it was going and what it was trying to say. It never introduced a character or a plot point or a question if they didn’t have some ultimate purpose in the larger story at hand. It was a show that demanded a lot of its audience, but always respected that commitment. Because even if some episodes seemed to meander and even if it was somewhat boring at times and even if there wasn’t always a ton of action and things didn’t always make sense, it was always worth watching because everything would always pay off in it end. On The Wire everything mattered. Everything. And that’s because David Simon took advantage of the unique properties of TV as a storytelling medium to tell a new kind of story, one that wasn’t concerned with simply keeping people tuning in and helping them pass their time in an entertaining way. He used the visual nature of the medium and the amount of time that it affords to tell an important and relevant and richly layered story in a way that had never been attempted before on TV. And that sadly, despite appearances to the contrary, has never successfully been attempted since.

And that’s because television doesn’t really allow for shows like The Wire to get made. You cant reduce what The Wire is to a simple pitchable idea. Were it not for HBO and the success of The Corner, The Wire would have never seen the light of day. And of course once it did see the light of day it got terrible ratings and was shunned by the mainstream TV establishment, never winning or even being nominated for a single major Emmy (just like Citizen Kane didn’t win Best Picture). And that’s because it was too far ahead of its time. What The Wire offered isn’t what we demand from our television shows or even what we expect. We watch television shows that pose tons of questions, introduce tons of characters, open up tons of plot points without ever paying any of them off and then we say, "oh well, we can’t expect a television show to answer everything or have purpose behind everything they do or a reason for every decision that they make. It was an entertaining ride and that’s good enough. We can’t expect them to have had it all planned out from the start." But here’s the thing. The Wire has proved that we can. We can demand more from our television shows. There’s no reason they can't deliver on all of their promises. There’s no reason we can’t expect Wire-level greatness from people who are seeming to promise us just that. We've been to the moon. We can go back. We just have to change the way we approach TV. And the way it gets made.

And luckily for us that early 70’s-like window of opportunity to rewrite the rules of an artistic and entertainment medium is now upon us. Because we seem to be at a sort of crossroads now with television. It’s a medium and an industry that is changing at an incredibly rapid pace whether it wants to or not. From HBO and niche cable channels, to the advent of TV on DVD and Hulu and DVR, to independently produced series and series created strictly for the internet, seismic shifts seem to be hitting the industry constantly. And the type of content that is created, the way it is watched, how it is produced, and who it is produced for are things that are changing every day. Shows like 24, and Arrested Development, and, well, Lost would have never seen the light of day on network TV, or any TV really, just 15 years ago. And people forget that something as basic as a show starting its run in January so that it could run uninterrupted was unheard of even five years ago. The way that our grandkids consume television and think about television will likely be radically different than the way we do currently. So while we’re changing television, let's change it for the better. Let’s write better rules.

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“We were building toward the last 15 minutes of the show—and doing so for a long time.”
– David Simon

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Now I hear your complaints. Sometimes it’s good to have TV that doesn’t ask too much of me, you say. I like to have something that’s not too hard on my brain that helps me unwind after a long day. Or that I can watch with my friends. Or that I don’t have to stress about missing an episode of. Or that’s just good old-fashion fun. Well that’s cool. I agree. Television can still be all of those things. The existence of The Godfather didn’t mean that Jaws couldn’t get made. Television will always turn out shows that are entertaining for the sake of simply being entertaining. I’m just looking for a way that it can also make other shows. Shows like The Wire. Because right now there's no apparatus in place for shows like that to get made. And if we have an example like The Wire of what television can be capable of why not have an avenue available for pursuing that?
Also, I’m not just referring to strictly to dramas here. I could just as easily have used as my example of television storytelling perfection the British version of The Office. Or really most BBC comedies. Because we’re not about genre here. We're about making television be as good as it can be. Allowing it to realize its true potential as a medium. We've gone from viewing it as a collecton of vaguely related episodes to, at its best, thinking of it as a collection of loosely related seasons. I'm just looking for a way to allow television to take the next step.

So how does that happen?

Well, obviously it will require having a new structure in place. Guidelines for what these new types of shows should look like and how their creation should approached. Rules if you will. Rules which reality shows and competition shows and game shows and talk shows and all other non-scripted shows are obviously exempt from. And rules which do not have to be followed if network executives and a specific show’s creator BOTH agree that their show would be better served by disobeying them. These rules may not in reality be that practical, enforceable, or even reasonable. But they are rules that I think should be strived for and ones that are good points of reference for changing what think of as a successful television show. And also, they are rules that I have spent an absurd amount of time in my life thinking about. So without further ado I present…

The New Rules of Television (or, What David Simon Would Do)

*All shows must have a predetermined end date

Two of the biggest new shows this season are Glee and Community. Both of which logically should end with the graduation of their characters. But if both are still successful four years from now I would bet my life savings on the fact that the networks and producers of those shows will find a way to keep them going. Even though it makes no logical sense from a story perspective to do so. Because as we’ve established, people that create television view story as secondary to simply having a show. A television show just becomes this self-propagating entity. It keeps producing new ideas simply to sustain itself, whether those ideas will ultimately add up to a larger whole or not. When you don’t have an end date you start writing about the meaning of a character's tattoos. When you do have an end date you can bring in a bunch of new characters from a frigate who ultimate have nothing to do with anything and won’t even be in any way a part of the larger story at hand. Okay, so bad example, but you get my point. With an end date creators can decide what story they are going to tell and make sure everything adds up to a greater whole. Storytelling will get stronger and series will be tighter and more entertaining without all the needless filler and plot threads and characters that go nowhere. The value of this rule seems pretty obvious and the number of shows that would have benefited from it endless. And now that Lost has done it there's precedent for it. It’s been proven to be something networks are willing to consider. As they should. Because it makes as much sense for them as it does for show creators and audiences. As the ABC learned with Lost setting an end date kept the audience from fleeing in droves. And it kept the show relevant and it's quality high. And by maintaining the audiences of their existing shows it means that the networks will have less schedule holes to fill and therefore less new shows they have to develop and promote each season. In fact promotion cost across the board would go down because it’s cheaper to keep someone watching something they like than it is to try and convince them to watch something new.

Of course in this new system shows will end sooner than they likely would have otherwise, but since we live in a world now where nearly all new shows get canceled in one year or less, in the end having a television schedule full of somewhat limited-run yet successful and high quality shows that will likely do well in DVD sales is surely preferable and more profitable than a small handful of long running hit shows that slowly lose their audiences over time mixed in with a whole bunch of forgettable and quickly cancelled filler.

Seems like a win for everyone.

Now naturally all involved are going to want their shows to run for, like, 20 years and therefore claim that that’s how much story they have to tell. Which leads us to....

*No show’s run is to exceed four years unless a strong overwhelmingly compelling reason can be given as to why it should

Four years is not just the length of high school and college (usually) but it’s also a presidential term. And, if you do 24 episodes in a season, it's also almost exactly 100 hours. I can’t think of many stories that would need longer than that to be effectively told. I also can’t think of any show that wouldn’t have been better served by lasting four seasons or less. Sure I still enjoy watching The Office six seasons in, but it would have been an infinitely better show if it had ended after four. My life wouldn’t be in any way lessened if I hadn’t been able to experience Michael Scott working for Sabre. And if there are any lose ends or the creators feel overwhelming compelled to return to the characters and the material they can always make a movie, ala The Office Christmas Special. But even then be careful. Those almost never work. For example, there is at least a 90% chance the Arrested Development movie, if it ever gets made, will be woefully disappointing.

Now sure, The Wire was five seasons, but they would have been one of those special cases. They had a strong and compelling reason to have a fifth season. Even if it wasn’t their strongest season it attempted to tackle topics that still needed to be addressed to give the full picture of that city and the reasons for why it was the way it was.

And also the exemption allows for shows like Law and Order which are completely self-contained. Not every show has to be as serialized story. There still room on television for more episodic fare. We’re not trying to put an end to The Towering Inferno or Smokey and the Bandit. We’re just trying to create a world The Conversation or Dog Day Afternoon can also get made.

*All shows should only be the number of episodes that is necessary to tell that season’s story

With there now being both the cable and broadcast models I think we are all on board with the idea of television seasons of varying length. This idea seems pretty self explanatory in both its purpose and practicality, and in fact its pretty much already being implemented. I guess the only major change would be with the networks and their marriage to the idea of a twenty-something episode season. Time to let that go you old fogies. Sure you’d have to produce a greater number of overall series to fill your year-round schedule, but you’re already basically doing that now anyway. And if The BBC can do it so can you.

(Okay, okay, I realize that’s an apples to oranges argument but this piece is already running WAY too long so let’s just move on)

*Every season of a show must be shot in full before airing, including the first season.

It's key to mention here that an entire series doesn’t need to be written entirely in full before ever airing. Just each individual season should be filmed before that particular season begins to air. At the end of each season a show’s creator can assess things that aren’t working like he or she thought they would. They may want to change their mind about certain choices or certain elements. New ideas or ways to tell the story might occur to them. Television is a collaborative endeavor and one that for various reason needs to have some flexibility built into it. I get that.
But I do think that always filming an entire season before airing is valuable. If reshoots or tweeks are needed, fine, but if nothing else, that kind of commitment and faith by a network and a creator in a specific vision would certainly change television; likely for the better.

First of all, if someone had to make that kind of commitment to something they would think a lot longer about what it is they want to produce. They’d be less hesitant to put crap on the air. Like a GM in sports, people in television often make decisions with short term interests in mind even if those short term interests might be to the ultimate detriment of long term whole. I propose we call this concept the “Tail Section Survivors Theory” (Okay so maybe the “tailies” weren’t a detriment to Lost but ultimately they served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. It’s pretty much impossible to argue otherwise.)

And secondly with every show automatically getting a full season pick up writers can make smarter more long range, big-picture type decisions without having to constantly worry about simply keeping an audience tuning in. The worst thing that happens is that their show gets cancelled, and even then, since it will already all exist on film it can live on on DVD and lead to future jobs if it’s good enough. This also obviously benefits audiences and it benefits networks as well by allowing them to get at least some sort of return on their investment even for shows they wind up cancelling.

Also, by taping entire seasons in advance of their airings show runners wouldn’t be so susceptible to the whims of fans. In the age of the internet this is becoming increasingly problematic. As Chuck Klosterman has said, I do think that there’s something very detrimental about trying to be a creative person and constantly interfacing with the audience you’re creating for. And thats because listening to too many opinions and trying to please too many people never leads to anything good. You know what was created by committee? The atomic bomb. And I think we all know how that worked out. It bombed. (Cue rimshot)

So with Nikki and Paolo, for example, who gives a fuck if people don’t like them? If they are integral to the story you want to tell then it’ll all pay off in the end. If they aren’t integral enough to the story you want to tell then you shouldn’t have introduced them in the first place. I feel sure back when Season Two of The Wire was airing people on the internet bitched about the focus shifting from the drug trade to the dock workers. But David Simon didn’t give a fuck. Because establishing that world was key to the larger story he wanted to tell. Nikki and Paolo were the producers throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. I would say they didn’t have the power of the conviction but the real problem is they didn’t have any convictions. Only ideas.

Which brings us back to my original point- the supremacy of story.

(For someone so obsessed with story I’ve had a pretty hard time creating and maintaining a thru line)

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“Q: I’ve always wondered how much of a character’s ultimate arc was known to you and how early it was known. For instance, did (SPOILER) always have to die? Did (SPOLIER) always have to become (SPOILER)? Was it just built into their DNA as characters?


A: It was. It was built in. You have to know where you’re going and one of the things that television in particular, more than film, certainly more than prose, suffers from is that there’s so much money in the product that once you get an audience, once you achieve an audience, your job is to stay in that audience ad nauseam.”
– an interview with David Simon

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Now I know most of these rules will never be implemented or never even considered. And not just because no one reads this blog. But because the central problem with television, as with pretty much all things in this country, is money. The profit motive runs TV perhaps more so than any other artistic medium. And if the system they have in place now is able to produce the profits they desire then why mess with it?

Well because as I’ve said the old structure of how TV is produced is and consumed is changing radically. Whether they like it or not. And when the old rules no longer apply, its best to fall back on the oldest rule around – make a quality product and people will buy it. Now how to make that quality product or even what it should look like is certainly open to debate. It’s a discussion I’ve been having a lot this week when talking with friends about the Lost finale. And a debate that, as this insanely long blog post should demonstrate, I’m pretty passionate about. I’ve laid out my ideas here, but certainly my proposals don't have to be the ultimate answer. Nor, maybe, should they be. They certainly aren't or flawless or even necessarily realistic. In the end, they're simply a different way of thinking about television. They're the difference between looking at television as a story that you write as you go, and looking at it as a story you write largely in full and then slowly release in segments. The second method isn’t a perfect system, but it seems to me inherently better than the first. And if it seems impossible and radical and heretical then that's because we’ve never really looked at television that way. But if we want to hope for more Wires, more satisfying Losts, less of that gnawing feeling that the time we invest in our favorite shows is time that’s not being well spent, time that’s not being respected, time that could be better spent elsewhere, time that’s ultimately for naught, then these new rules would make a great jumping-off point. A great starting point for important discussion. A discussion about what we want out of our television programs.

Because ultimately it all goes back to the opening two quotes. To David Simon saying that the ultimate goal has to be story. And to Chuck Lorre admitting he has no idea what story he is trying to tell. And although we may disagree about how to tell stories using the medium of television, I think we can all agree with David Simon that stories are what it should be all about.

And also that Two and Half Men is a fucking terrible show.

Worst. Oscar. Telecast. Ever.

Hey Oscars you just had your best telecast ever, what are you going to do now? Well apparently the answer was blow the whole thing up and start from scratch. Because one year after the show's artistic highpoint, the new Oscar producers decided not to follow the perfect blueprint that had been laid out for them, but to instead totally overhaul what was barely, if at all, broken. Why present the awards in a logical way that tells a story and is able to rapidly fire off several like-themed categories in quick succession when you can hand them out haphazardly with no rhyme or reason whatsoever with a ton of dead air as presenters walk on and off stage? And why have a touching segment where all the acting nominees are honored by past winners in their category, when you can have random people of widely varying degrees of connection talk about only the lead acting nominees and then have the tributes to the supporting acting nominees being nothing more than ridiculously long clips packages that in several cases give away the endings to their movies? Why give out the Lifetime Achievement Award on the telecast when you can do an overlong tribute to someone with no connection at all to the Oscars? And why perform the nominated songs when you can have people from So You Think You Can Dance do interpretive dance routines to the nominated scores? Because that’s never not been a good idea.

I could go on, but I just don’t have the energy. I love the Oscars more than anything and every year I feel like I have to defend them against the usual “overlong, boring, pointless, etc.” critics. And I always read the same negative reviews and am baffled as to how these people could have been watching the same wonderful show that I was. So it brings me absolutely no joy to say that the Oscars last night were a boring, overlong, terrible train wreck of an awards show. And if I'm saying that about them then what hope is there for anyone else? It’s like when Lyndon Johnson said he knew he had lost the country when he lost Cronkite. (And yes I did just compare myself to Walter Cronkite). Even some incredibly deserving and popular acting winners and one all-time great speech couldn’t save the proceedings. And those things are usually all I need. All the producers needed to do was just stay out of their own way and the show was perfectly lined up to be a massive success. And that's the biggest shame of it all. Not only did they have deserving winners but they had to know they were going to have one of the biggest audiences ever. It’s not every year you have Avatar, Up, District 9, and The Blind Side. They didn’t need to do anything other than not fuck up. And yet they did just that at every turn. They lost The Masters on a gimme putt. And now I have to wait a whole nother year for a shot at watching a decent telecast.

(And let me just say now that if Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic are brought back as producers again next year, so help me God, I might have to write a very sternly worded letter to The President of the Academy’s personal assistant, or whoever opens his mail.)

Anyway, on to the details of and thoughts about the abomination that was:

*Morgan Freeman’s daughter is named Morgana Freeman? How did I never know this before? That’s amazing. Well done New James Earl Jones.

*Hey, what is Meryl Streep doing at the Oscars?!?

*I was just thinking, how can the Oscars get more gay? And then I saw the Neil Patrick Harris song and dance number.

(No offense to NPH, but do we all love him so much now that we’re not going to call bullshit on that thing? He did the best he could with it, but it was painfully unfunny and had absolutely nothing to do with anything. It wasn’t quite Snow White dancing with Rob Lowe but it wasn’t as far off as most people are pretending it was.)

*You know what the kids are into? Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin doing awkwardly silted stand up. Seriously, whose idea was this co-hosting thing? Steve Martin was great hosting by himself. Why pair him with someone with very limited live comedy experience. Hell, why pair him with anyone? And if you’re trying to make your show hipper and more mainstream, why Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin? What, were Dan Aykroyd and Christopher Walken not available? It never made any sense and it played out about as terribly as I thought it would. Just let Steve do it by himself next year okay and we’ll forget this whole thing ever happened. No really; we will. Trust me.
(Wow, I’m bitter. I’ll stop soon I promise.)

*Hey Oscars, Lawrence Welk called and he wants his bumper music back.
(You know what else the kids are into? Lawrence Welk jokes.)

*“That damn Helen Mirren” FTW

*“Uber Bingo” FTCENSW (For The Completely Expected Not-So Win)

*They’re not having performances of the nominated songs this year? What, was Beyonce busy?

*Wow, The Academy is really committed to this “Paris 36 is a real movie” ruse. They filmed a clip for it and everything.

*District 9 was inspired by events in South Africa? I thought it was inspired by “I couldn’t make Halo”.

*A Conversation
Sigourney Weaver to the Avatar Art Direction winners as she escorted them off the stage: “Hey remember that time when we just met for the first time right now?”

*Okay, playing “Don’t You Forget About Me" as the entrance music for Anthony Michael Hall, Macaulay Culkin and Ally Sheedy was unnecessarily cruel don’t you think?

*So just to recap:
Year of Marlon Brando’s death - no tribute
Year of Katherine Hepburn’s death - no tribute
Year of John Hughes’ death – seven minute long three-part tribute

Sure, it was a moving tribute and it made me want to go rewatch a bunch of John Hughes’ movies, but the man was never nominated for even a single Oscar. His tribute had absolutely no business being on that show. It was an inexplicable, unnecessary, and overlong bit of pandering to mainstream America that the Oscars should be better than. What’s next, a salute to Nora Ephron? Leave that shit to the People’s Choice awards. That was definitely a low point in my years of Oscar watching.

“Hey, Lauren Bacall I know you’ve waited fifty years to get your lifetime achievement award but we’re gonna have to limit your acceptance speech to clips from an off-site pre-taped dinner party so that we can make room for Judd Nelson to talk about what it was like to work on The Breakfast Club.” Speaking of which…

*Wow, Judd Nelson was available to come to the Oscars? Who would’ve thunk it?

*Damn it! The Coen Brothers screenplay snippet featured the word “equanimity”. I had “lugubrious” in my “Which Pretentious Word Will Be Featured In The A Serious Man Dialogue Snippet” office pool.

*You know what would be hilarious and unexpected? If one year Ben Stiller came out dressed in normal clothes and didn’t act like a total moron.
*Wow, major upset. Charlize Theron introduces a movie that’s not District 9. Did they choose her for Precious (based on the novel Push by Sapphire) because she’s African American?

*Something I actually said in all seriousness – “Why is Robin Williams presenting Best Supporting Actress? Where the hell is last year’s Best Supporting Actor winner? Was he too busy or something?"

*Sure Farrah Fawcett was missing, but to me the bigger question is where was Demi Moore’s career in that In Memoriam montage?

*Is James Cameron’s wife wearing blue on purpose? Please tell me she is.

*The Cove is the first Oscar nomination and win for Fisher Stevens? How is that possible?

*I didn’t see Burma VJ, but if its anything like Burma BJ then lemme just say that it got robbed.

*Hey, it’s Keanu Reeves introducing The Hurt Locker. I knew Point Break would someday be relevant at the Oscars.

*“Stay tuned for special guests”. More special than Tyler Perry? Not possible.

*Jeff Bridges: Now officially an Achiever

*It may have been my worst year ever for picks, but at least I won the “What’s the Forest Whitaker-Sandra Bullock Connection” contest almost instantly.

*Holy fucking spoiler alert Peter Sarsgaard!

*Okay Sandra, whatever I may think of the merits of your award, your speech was outstanding. Really. One of the best I can remember. Funny and touching and well written, but not overly written. And when you thanked your husband it was one of the realest moments I can recall ever seeing at the Oscars. The exact opposite of Mo’Nique’s speech which seemed like it had been test-marketed and rehearsed for weeks. So well done Sandra. Since you got an Oscar for in essence being a nice likable person, you at least came off exceedingly nice and likeable. I’m happy for you.

(At the same time – mothers never get thanked?? Don’t we have a whole day set aside for that very thing?)

*I was really praying that Barbara Streisand was going to follow up “The time has come…” with “for James Cameron to win a second Best Director Oscar!”

*Congrats Kathryn Bigelow. You’re now officially the best working female director who didn’t also ruin the Godfather saga.

*So the Best Director race really turned out the exact opposite of the 2008 Democratic Party Primary race didn’t it?

*Whoa there Tom Hanks, you didn't even have the condom on yet…

*Although part of me thinks we’ll look at The Hurt Locker in 50 years the way people look at Marty today, I’m certainly happy it won, and it was far preferable to the alternative, even if for only symbolic reasons. It was a good win for women, for art, and for the movie industry as a whole. May the art house movie live to see another day!

Oscar Preview '10

In terms of unimpressive non-achievements, the fact that I have never lost an Oscar pool that I have entered is perhaps the one that I am perhaps most proud of. And now I'm here to share with you, for the first time, a complete Oscar ballot of mine. Get your snacks close at hand, use the bathroom now, tell your family you love them; it's gonna be a long 6,000 words.

The Short Categories (Documentary, Live Action, and Animated Shorts)
Okay I know this is where competitive pools are won and lost. But unlike years past I haven’t seen any of these nominees nor do I plan it. I just don't have the time. And the truth is, seeing the nominees in no way helps predict a winner. Because these are an absolute crapshoot. Often times the nominee that seems least likely to win prevails. And there is never a rhyme or reason or predictable voting pattern to these awards. So fuck it. Just draw a name out of a hat or something. I’m going with The Last Truck because it seems the most timely, A Matter of Loaf and Death because it’s by Nick Park, and The Door because I always like to root for movies about doors.

Best Visual Effects
Hmm wow, tough one. Hard to say really. The visual effects in Avatar were pretty decent I suppose. I guess I’ll go with that then.

Will Win/Should Win: Avatar

Best Art Direction
Here’s the thing. Everyone assumes that even if Avatar doesn’t win Best Picture it’s gonna clean up in all the secondary awards. But other than visual effects it’s hardly a lock in any other category. And other than that category and this one I don’t know where else it’s even the clear runaway favorite.

Will Win: Avatar
Should Win: Avatar


Best Sound Mixing & Best Sound Editing
So now just completely ignore that previous entry because here’s where Avatar picks up another two easy Oscars. Not because they are necessarily warranted or unwarranted, but because nobody really knows exactly what these categories are or how to judge them. So considering there’s no musical or music related movie in the race this year, and considering that The Hurt Locker is a pretty quiet movie, I think Avatar is the best bet since voters have history of just choosing the nominee that is the best movie and has the most sound. Because if it’s got the most sound then it probably had the most editing and mixing involved in that sound. So in this case that means Avatar. Because why not?

(That should really be Avatar’s Oscar campaign slogan - “Avatar. Because why not?”)

Will Win: Avatar (but don’t sleep on The Hurt Locker)
Should Win: Who knows

Best Cinematography
Okay after saying that Avatar wasn’t going to win anything I've now picked it in three straight categories. The lesson, as always, is not to listen to anything I say. But as much as I would like to pick against it here, even Avatar haters have to admit that it LOOKED amazing. And maybe that wasn’t the cinematography’s doing per se, but when looking at this category on a ballot a voter is going to ask themself “which of these movies looked the best”, and the answer to that question is for most people going to be Avatar. I‘ve seen many other pundits picking The Hurt Locker, and it could easily win, but I think its herky-jerky “you are there” camera work feels pretty standard issue and played out for that type of movie at this point. And the Academy is not going to give a semi-major Oscar to a Harry Potter movie. And Inglorious Basterds doesn’t really stand out from a cinematography perspective. Which leaves The White Ribbon. Which is the most deserving choice. Its camera work was distinct and beautiful and (film nerd alert!) its visual compositions really helped to tell the story and give the movie its tone and feel. But if the Academy didn’t give the legendary Roger Deakins an award for his black and white work on The Man Who Wasn’t There then they’re not giving some no name an award for his black and white work on a foreign film that no one saw.

Will Win: Avatar
Should Win: The White Ribbon

Best Editing
Alright, here's where we (I) actually do start picking against the Avatar consensus. I bet everyone’s going to pick it here, but I’m not so sure. See, The Hurt Locker is seemingly the Best Picture favorite at this point. And there’s a well-known link between Best Editing and Best Picture. In fact there’s only been six times in the past seventeen years that the two awards havent corresponded. And of those six times, most have either been for movies with iconic editing (Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, The Bourne Ultimatum) movies with iconic editors (The Aviator – Thelma Shoonmaker) or movies that edited together several disparate stories into a unified whole (Traffic). And since three of those awards also corresponded with Best Director or the favorite to win Best Director (Saving Private Ryan, Traffic, The Aviator) there seems to be a correlation in voters’ minds between the best directed movie and the best edited one. And since no matter what happens with Best Picture Kathyrn Bigelow is the HEAVY favorite to win Best Director (we’ll get to that), it would seem that The Hurt Locker is a better bet to win Best Editing than Avatar. And that’s as it should be. Because for all of Avatar’s considerable achievements would you say its editing was really one of them? Yeah, neither would voters. I think.

(Oh yeah, and that sixth time that Best Editing and Best Picture haven’t matched up recently? (Wait for it)…Black Hawk Down. A war movie that creates its sense of chaos and tension largely through its editing. Sound familiar?)

Will Win/Should Win: The Hurt Locker

Best Costume Design
Colleen Atwood and Sandy Powell are the names here. (You know you’re an Oscar nerd when you think of costume designers as having name recognition.) Colleen Atwood won for Chicago, which on the surface seems very similar to Nine. But everyone hated Nine, and there’s sort of a been-there done-that quality to its costumes. And we’ll get back to Sandy Powell in a minute. Which leaves The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Bright Star, and Coco Before Chanel. No one saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Although I’d love the underrated Bright Star to get some love, its costumes are a little dowdy to win here. Plus no one saw it. Which leaves Coco Before Chanel. A movie about a fashion designer! Its gotta be the favorite right? Well that brings us back to Sandy Powell. Eight-time nominee. Associated with a more well know movie. And most crucial of all, her movie deals with royalty. Jackpot! In Costume Design, royalty trumps all. So as they always say - when in doubt go with the movie about royalty. It’s an Oscar pool rule. Look it up.
(editors note: Actually, you can’t. Because Andy just made it up)

Will Win: Young Victoria
Should Win: Hell if I know

Best Makeup
I’m pretty sure Il Divo is a made up movie so it can’t win. And Young Victoria doesn’t have anything as flashy as the work that was done on Eric Bana. He was so unrecognizable in Star Trek that it almost seemed like he could act. Maybe those makeup people could work with Orlando Bloom.

Will Win/Should Win: Star Trek
(And if the winners don’t say “live longer and prosper” at some point in their acceptance speech I’m gonna be very disappointed)

Best Score
It looks like before the run of the show is even done Lost will be able to boast an Oscar winner in its ranks. Because the creator of those occasionally comically overbearing strings and assorted strange sounds that make up the soundtrack of Lost is gonna waltz to an easy and well-deserved Oscar for his work on Up. In terms of people involved with Lost most likely to someday win an Oscar, I would have put Michael Giacchino several spots below JJ Abrams and Terry O’Quinn and about 80,000 spots above Emilie de Ravin. Just goes to show you never know. But good for him because Up deserves as many Oscars as it can get. And anything that might lead to the world potentially getting to see more of Dug the dog is something I’m all for.

Will Win/Should Win: Up

Best Song
Fun Fact: “The Weary Kind” was co-written by Ryan Bingham, which is the same name as George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air. Pretty crazy right? What are the odds?

And that’s not all.

Another nominee, “Loin de Paname” from Paris 36, has lyrics by Frank Thomas. I’m assuming that’s the famous baseball player Frank Thomas, but I haven’t bothered to verify that. If only there was an entire mini-industry devoted just to covering the Academy Awards and could tell us these things. Alas…

Anyway, Ryan Bingham the character is probably going home empty handed, but Ryan Bingham the person getting himself a real life Oscar is perhaps the surest bet of the night. His song was the most integral to the plot of its film and it is also by far the best song of the nominees. Which is good because now not only will we be able to declare a clear winner in the Battle of the Ryan Binghams, but it will mean that T-Bone Burnett will assume the title of Coolest Named Person to Ever Win an Oscar, narrowly edging out Juicy J and Crunchy Black.

Will Win/Should Win: "The Weary Kind"

Animated Feature
Yeah another Oscar for Up! That being said, don’t sleep on Fantastic Mr. Fox. I know it’s not nominated for Best Picture like Up is, but it’s got a ton of support. And there have been upsets in this category before. And Fox has a more high-profile director and a bigger name cast who are all well-respected and even beloved in the industry. I’m not saying I think it WILL happen, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be shocked if it did. I would however be upset.

Will Win/Should Win: Up

Best Documentary
I’m not as educated on this one as I should be, having only seen Food Inc., but I feel pretty confident that it’s going to win. There’s a strong history of this award going to the most high-profile and most widely seen nominee. And that’s definitely Food Inc. this year. Other than The Cove I’ve never even heard of any of the other nominees. And everyone I know who has seen The Cove says that although it’s good, it’s very disturbing. Almost too disturbing. And although it’s about an important issue, it’s not about one that affects our lives as clearly as the food industry. Enough people have said things about Food Inc. like “It changed my life” that I don’t dare bet against it here. Sure Super Size Me didn’t win, but Food Inc. is infinitely more eye- opening, powerful, and better made. So I say it crushes The Cove just like some fecal matter filled beef made from steroid injected inhumanly slaughtered cows. Which incidentally you probably just ate.
(Nausea. It’s hilarious!)

Will Win/Should Win: Food Inc.

Best Foreign Language Film
Here's another category where I'm not as educated as I should be. (Not the best of years for me.) Of these nominees the only one I’ve seen is The White Ribbon. And it’s great. It’s critically acclaimed. It feels important and lasting and memorable. And so all I know for sure about this category is that the winner won’t be The White Ribbon.

See, the thing with this category is that in order to vote in it you have to have seen all of the nominees in theaters. And not just any theaters, but at special Academy screenings. And so anyone who is actually still active in the industry, or, you know, has a life, isn’t voting in this category. So when choosing a winner for Best Foreign Language Film ask yourself “which nominee would a group of retired 75-90 year old Hollywood-types with a lot of time on their hands like”? There’s a reason that in the past seven years three of the winners were about people dealing with death and two others were about the Holocaust. And true The White Ribbon is in black and white (just like they used to make em!) and deals with the rise of fascism, but it's also three hours long, slower than molasses, and doesn’t have much of a plot or things that “happen” per se. And its artsy as hell. This is not what old people are into. Plus the Palme d’Or winner NEVER wins this category. So The White Ribbon is out. But beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. I want to say Un Prophete, since it’s the only other nominee here with name recognition and mass critical acclaim. But its gonna have a hard time fending off an Israeli movie about Arab-Hebrew relations, a movie about the systematic abuse of women and the rise of socialism in Peru in the 80’s, and a sweeping epic about social and political upheaval in Argentina. I’m gonna go with Un Prophete, but Ajami wouldn’t shock me. Nor would any of the other nominees. Except The White Ribbon. (That was the sound of The White Ribbon producers preparing their acceptance speech).

Will Win: Un Prophete?
Should Win: The White Ribbon (as uneducated an opinion as that might be)

Best Adapted Screenplay
I have a few questions about Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. First of all, if the novel is called Push then why is the movie called Precious? Also who the hell is Sapphire and where has she been this entire awards season? And what are the odds that someone would name themselves Sapphire and NOT be a stripper? .002%? Even knowing for a fact that Diablo Cody was at one point a stripper, if you had me guess which recent Oscar-affiliated writer was a stripper I would have put everything I own on Sapphire. And lastly, is the Adapted Screenplay nomination for Precious the most redundantly worded Oscar nomination of all time? I cant imagine anything ever has or will top - “Geoffrey Fletcher for Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire from Push by Sapphire”. Can we all just agree to cut off the last part of that statement on Oscar night?

Anyway, Up in the Air is winning here. And thank God. It was looking like my favorite movie of the year was going to get shut out, but luckily it ran up against a pretty weak field of nominees. I mean I love Nick Hornby and I love An Education, but outside of that, none of the rest of these are that noteworthy. District 9 is a fine film, but the screenplay is nothing to write home about. And as good as the screenplay for In the Loop is we can’t give it an award until David Mamet admits that Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche are simply pseudonyms he came up with. And lastly, I have strict rules against giving Oscars to people named after precious metals, no pun intended. (Editor's note: none achieved). Yes I realize Sapphire herself isn’t actually nominated, but just roll with me here.

So it makes me tremendously happy to be able to tell Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner to prepare for a well-deserved Oscar win. And for a pretty awkward and strange acceptance speech considering they just met for the first time a few weeks ago. I can’t wait.

Will Win/Should Win: Up in the Air

Best Original Screenplay
The "Hurt Locker for Best Screenplay" movement seems to be gaining steam, which is great because I’m sure it was very hard to write a script where people stand around not talking. All that pithy non-repartee must have been a real slog to come up with. But you know what I think would be even better? If we gave Quentin Tarantino an Oscar instead. Come on, you know his speech is gonna be outstandingly over-the-top. He’s gonna make Cuba Gooding Jr. look calm and contained by comparison. You gotta be rooting for that. And then there’s his script itself. It's brilliant in terms of plot and structure, but mostly in terms of dialogue. Holy shit that dialogue is good. It’s funny, memorable, smart, and true. Plus it’s in like 18 languages (I might have made that up). What more could you want? Well other than boring people standing around silently diffusing bombs.

Will Win: Inglorious Basterds (barely)
Should Win: Inglorious Basterds


Best Supporting Actor
I’ve talked about my love for Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds previously so no need to rehash it all here. But just know that in any other year Woody Harrleson would win in a walk. In The Messenger he’s magnificent. He’s wonderful. He’s revelatory. And he doesn’t have even the slightest prayer of winning. Nor should he. Because this isn’t any other year. It’s Christoph Waltz’s. We’re just living in it.

(As a side note: would it have killed them to give Zack Galifinakis a nomination? I mean I know comedy isn’t valid and all, but he essentially was the highest grossing comedy of the year. And Hollywood types do love grosses don’t they? No one other than Christoph Waltz was winning this year anyway, what would the harm have been in throwing a harmless nomination Zack’s way? Matt Damon with a silly accent really needed an Oscar nod over arguably the breakout and most talked about performance of the year? Really?)

Will Win/Should Win: Christoph Waltz

Best Supporting Actress
I can guarantee you three things about the Oscars this year:

1.) Mo'Nique will win Best Supporting Actress

2.) She will take at least 10 minutes walking up to the stage

3.) Her speech will be praised by every media outlet and person you know, yet it will in actuality be pretty standard issue, unmemorable and lacking in any real substance

Look, I have no problem with Mo'Nique winning. She gave the best supporting actress performance this year and it’s hard to even make a case for any of the other nominees. Sure the fact that Mo'Nique has an Oscar will seem ridiculous in a few years but no moreso than a slew of other people who hold that distinction. And she’ll be carrying on a proud tradition of people who won an Oscar for basically one powerhouse scene (Beatrice Straight, Jennifer Connelly, George Clooney, Jennifer Hudson). Hell, probably my all-time favorite supporting actress performance (Kathy Bates in Primary Colors) is a one-note caricature that is redeemed by one powerhouse knock-out stunner of a scene. So I get it. But I just think Mo'Nique is getting a little over-praised. Much like the film itself, her performance up until the very end is so over the top and melodramatic and completely un-nuanced that it not only doesn’t seem realistic but it almost seems laughable. It’s not surprising that the group who once gave Crash their highest prize would seem tone deaf on issues of race and class in America, but here’s a hint for them: If a movie has both Oprah and Tyler Perry attached to it it’s probably not going to be an accurate or deep and probing look into any sort of reality that real people actually deal with. Unless of course they live in an overblown Lifetime movie/misery porn. I’m pretty sure no one is as purely and unequivocally monstrous as Mo'Nique’s character, but heaven forbid you ask audiences to accept shades of grey. (I really need to stop watching so much of The Wire. It's making me ask too much of my entertainment.) Anyway, it would be interesting to see what the reaction to Mo'Nique’s performance, and Mo'Nique herself would be if she had any legitimate competition. But while all the other nominees are fine (well, Maggie Gyllenhaal is badly miscast but whatever) none of them turned in work that I would even remotely classify as “Oscar worthy”. So Mo'Nique it is.
Whatever.

Will Win/Should Win: Mo'Nique

Best Actor
As (almost) always it’s a pretty strong year for Best Actor nominees. No slouches in this bunch. But Jeff Bridges has had this thing locked up for months. And I’m cool with that. It’s an “Oscar” performance. It’s a great character that feels both personal and a bit of a stretch for Jeff Bridges. He’s got some killer scenes and killer moments and he even does his own signing. Plus he’s well-liked and overdue, for what that's worth. And it’s hard for me to say he doesn’t give the best performance of the lot. But. If I had seen A Single Man back when I wrote my Best of 2009 entry, Colin Firth would have made that list for sure. He’s completely unrecognizable, and I don’t mean just in a physical sense. It’s just a stunning transformative piece of work, and the scene when he finds out that his lover is dead is by far the most underrated scene of the year. It’s magnificent. Still, passing the Best Actor torch from DDL to Sean Penn to Colin Firth doesn’t seem quite right. He just doesn’t have that Best Actor heft yet. As soon as he makes more than one movie of substance maybe it’ll be different. Maybe that seems silly and unfair, but that’s how these things work. It’s Jeff Bridges' turn, and there’s nothing Colin or anyone else can do about that. And oh yeah. Mr. Bridges gives a pretty damn great performance himself.

Will Win: Jeff Bridges
Should Win: (tie) Jeff Bridges & Colin Firth

Best Actress
It’s time to face facts. And one of those facts is that Sandra Bullock is about to win an Academy Award. And not just any Academy Award, but one for the The Blind Side. A movie so insipid and pandering and simplistic and insultingly reductive of complex social issues that of course everyone on my flight home from Houston absolutely loved it. (Oh how I love being a East Coast elitist asshole…) What separates The Blind Side from Remember the Titans, or Glory Road, or The Express, or Pride or any other Disney-fied "based on a true story" feel-good sports movie that makes complicated racial issues palpable and safe enough for white people who find Obama "too black" I don’t know. Well other than the fact that it's nominated for two major Academy Awards. And it's going to win one of them. Which means that future generations of Oscar completeists like myself are going to have to sit through it and think "Really? Really?!?" Which is a shame because I do like Sandra Bullock. She seems genuinely lovely and she's an underrated actress who is in and of herself not undeserving of awards recognition. And her work in The Blind Side is quite good. But sometimes the quality of your movie has to be taken into account. Right? It’s like in sports how the MVP of the league has to come from a winning team unless there are legitimately no other contenders and voters have no choice. Which is pretty much the case here. Helen Mirren is out because no one saw her movie and she just won a few years ago. And Gabourey Sidibe is out because the stuffy old white fogies of the Academy aren’t giving Best Actress to an overweight no-name African American woman. Maybe Best Supporting Actress but not Best Actress. They just aren't. (It's not right, but it’s true. So don’t blame me; like Ben Foster I'm just the messenger). Which leaves Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan. Everyone is saying that Meryl is Sandra's biggest competition, and that may be, but I really don't see her winning. People didn’t really like her movie and it's barely more respectable than The Blind Side. Plus she's only in half of it. And I don’t know that her performance, as great as it is, ever truly transcends the level of impersonation. And other than one scene, it’s kind of a lightweight role, lacking in big "Oscar moments". For anyone else I could maybe see them wining with that part, but we grade Meryl on a different scale and expect more from her than she gave us in Julie & Julia. The movement to get her an Oscar this year feels a lot like the movement to get Martin Scorsese an Oscar for The Aviator. Sure she's overdue, but we've waited this long, why settle for giving her an award for something that’s merely good, when we know she’s capable of transcendence. I just don't sense that voter's hearts are really into Meryl this year no matter how much people might be saying otherwise. Which leaves us with Carey Mulligan. Her movie is nominated for Best Picture and its infinitely more respectable than The Blind Side. She carries pretty much the whole thing herself. She's young and attractive, which if you don’t think is a MAJOR factor then clearly you haven't ever looked at a list of the past winners of Best Actress. And she's British which is a major voting bloc within The Academy. And oh yeah, she also gives the best performance of the year. She has several emotional outbursts/"Oscar scenes". She has a complex role that has nuance and depth that other actresses could easily screw up, yet she handles it with aplomb. But sadly if Meryl is Julie Christie, then I think Carey is Ellen Page. She's too young and unproven, so great as she might be, voters feel like they can wait and will be able to vote for her again in the future. Which leaves Sandra Bullock as Marion Cotillard. But just know this. If someone upsets her its going to be Carey Mulligan not Meryl Streep. And Im rooting for it to happen. That's why my Oscar night chant is going to be "Remember Adrien Brody".

Will Win: Sandra Bullock
Should Win: Carey Mulligan

Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow is winning here. She’s won nearly all the relevant precursor awards, she’s got momentum, she’s the director of the Best Picture favorite, people seem to like her, and the fact that a woman has never won before is certainly working in her favor. Plus James Cameron has already won before and he’s a massive douche bag that no one in Hollywood likes. But here’s the thing. He took 11 years out of his life to pursue a strange and singular personal passion project. He invented entirely new technology just to make his vision a reality. He waited until it was possible for him to do it entirely on his terms. He made the decision to make it 3D back when 3D was seen as some sort of dated novelty gimmick. And he made it political and relevant and topical when there was absolutely no commercial reason to do so. And he took what on paper must have seemed to anyone who heard about it like an absolutely terrible idea and turned it into a legit Best Picture nominee. There’s absolutely no one else who could have made Avatar as we’re going to find out in the years to come when every director in Hollywood tries. And not that I care about box office results, but it has to be mentioned that James Cameron followed up the highest grossing movie of all time with…the highest grossing movie of all time. It’s impossible to overstate what an incredible and unlikely achievement that is. It's so remarkable that I think in this case, it is worth taking into account. And as strange as it may seem considering his predilection for blockbuster crowd pleasers, James Cameron may be the closest thing Hollywood has to a true auteur. He may be a gaping asshole, but he had by far the most impressive and awards worthy directorial achievement of the year. His movie may not have been the best, but the vision, effort, and ability it took to make it was certainly was. So as much as I would like to see a woman win, I don’t think gender should be at all be a factor in voting. That’s how equality works. But I dont think in this case that that will be how it works.
Will Win: Kathryn Bigelow
Should Win: James Cameron
(Hey, did you know they were once married? Someone should really mention that at some point...)

Best Picture

"If you’ve read about Avatar, you know by now that it’s the future of movies. And if you’ve seen it, you know that the future of movies apparently looks a lot like the present of movies – big, expensive, effects driven action." – Mark Harris

I’m going to come off as very anti-Avatar in what's to follow so let me just say up top that I enjoyed Avatar. It’s a good film and it deserves its nomination and its box office success. But what it doesn’t deserve is Best Picture. Because for all its virtues, if you don’t think that in 30 years once its technology is commonplace that Avatar won’t seem like The Greatest Show on Earth or Ben-Hur or any of the countless overblown spectacles that have been nominated for Best picture but didn’t wind up winning then you are sadly delusional. Is Avatar an important film and one that will change the course of film history? Yes, and probably. And I’ve written before about how much I support and am impressed by its politics. But as impressive as those politics may be, the reason the movie has had the success it has and the reason it has its Best Picture nomination is because of its technical achievements. Take the same movie and make it with mid-90’s technology and no one pays attention or cares. And if there’s any type of movie we need to supporting it’s not the overblown blockbuster spectacle with a weak story. Lord knows Hollywood doesn’t need any additional encouragement to pump those out.

Look, The Avatar effect is going to be felt in Hollywood regardless. Ten years from now there’s probably only gonna be like five movies a year featuring real life humans sitting around doing realistic human things in 2D. But still, there’s no need to give filmmakers even more incentive to make Avatar type movies by showing them that they can get Academy Awards that way too. The Oscars are half the reason why any halfway decent movie even gets green-lit by major studios. If the studios can start winning Oscars with blockbusters then the Up in the Air’s of the world never even get out of development meetings. Now as a passionate backer of Lord of the Rings back in the day I realize on the surface I seem a bit hypocritical, but there are a few key differences here. First, The Lord of the Rings movies were based on some of the most beloved and respected books ever written. Their story was rich and complex served to create an entirely new world and with scores of interesting characters in it. Avatar gave us Ferngully in space and characters that for all the film's 3D achievements were strangely two demensional. For example, it would be hard to come up with a more cartoonishly over the top villain than General Shouty McEvil Pants or whatever his name was. Also, in Lord of the Rings the technology always seemed to be in service of the story. In Avatar the technology overwhelmed it. The story seemed to exist only to show off the technology. And if you don’t think that’s true then ask yourself how well the movie is going to play at home on DVD in 2D. A great movie should be great in any setting, not just on an IMAX screen wearing silly glasses. So I'm not opposed to blockbusters or big budget spectacles, Im just opposed to ones that make those elements secondary to story, character development, dialogue, and exploration of the human condition. Don't forget, Lord of the Rings won Best Screenplay. Avatar isnt even nominated.

So this year’s Best Picture race isn’t just a battle for the title of Best Picture, it is, in many ways, a battle between competing ideologies. A battle to declare what we as a people value in our art. A battle for what type of movies should be made and should be rewarded. And that’s why it's so encouraging to see that The Academy is leaning towards The Hurt Locker.

Now The Hurt Locker is a movie I respect and appreciate more than love and enjoy. I much prefer Up in the Air. It’s better acted, better written, and better made, and speaks more clearly to our times and our lives. It’s the movie that will best serve as our representative to future generations of this year. Not just this year in film, but this year on Earth. But you’ll get no real complaints from me if The Hurt Locker wins. Anything but Avatar is my mantra. Which is why I'm revelling in the irony of the fact that The Academy’s wrongheaded decision to open the Best Picture race up to 10 nominees is going to ultimately be Avatar’s downfall. In their attempt to get more commercial nominees, The Academy ensured that its most commercial nominee ever is going to lose the top prize. Because with the switch in the number of nominees they also switched the voting system. Used to be that only 1st place votes really mattered. But now voters have to rank the movies from 1 to 10 and essentially the movie with the best cumulative score wins. It’s actually slightly more complicated than that, but for our purposes that explanation will do.

So with the new system the movie that has the broadest support will likely be the winner. Now this is the first time this voting system has ever been used so it’s hard to predict with certainty how it will play out, but it would seem that the movie that is not necessarily the most liked but rather the movie that is the least disliked will win. And that’s where the fact that the average age of an Academy voter is 57.7 years old comes into play. See there’s a reason that before this year only two (or three depending on how you view ET) sci-fi films have ever been nominated for Best Picture. There’s a reason it took Lord of the Rings three tries to win Best Picture, and why ET lost to Gandhi, and why The Dark Knight got snubbed last year. Oscar voters are OLD. And old people aren’t generally that into loud noisy action scenes or weird creatures doing sci-fi type things. Those types of movies don’t seem to carry the type of artistic heft that your typical older voter is looking for in their Best Picture. I can see a lot of people ranking Avatar very high, but I can also see a whole lot of 70 and 80 year olds ranking it dead last on their ballots. And I can see a whole lot of people doing the same thing just out of spite. The Hurt Locker is safe and inoffensive and hard to hate. Sure it had explosions and action, but not in an action movie sense. War movies have been around since the dawn of film and have won Best Picture on several occasions. Old people can deal with that sort of action. There is strong precident for that type of action winning. And even if The Hurt Locker wasn’t your FAVORITE film of the year you probably liked it. And you’re gonna rank at least a few of the other nominees below it. And in fact there’s a quite sizeable block of people that feel passionately that it’s the year’s best film. It’s nearly swept all the critics’ awards. And normally the movie that does that doesn’t win Best Picture. This year though we need it to. We need the critics’ darling to defeat the blockbuster special effects extravaganza. (Hyperbolic statement alert) The future of movies depends on it.

And since I opened this section with a quote from Entertainment Weekly I’ll let EW film critic and Hurt Locker backer Owen Glieberman have the last word here:

“It’s worth taking a moment to point out why, for Academy voters, the box office has always been such a crucial factor. The vulgar way to put it would be: Hollywood, in the end, is all about the bottom line, and so a movie that doesn’t “perform” isn’t eligible, according to the industry’s core values, for the most coveted of honors.

(But) if The Hurt Locker wins this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture, it will in many ways fracture that essential crowd-pleasing code. Sure, the movie swept the critics’ awards, but that’s never been such a dominant criteria for Hollywood. (If it were, the Oscar for Best Picture would likely have gone to GoodFellas, or Nashville, or Pulp Fiction.) To me, it would be fantastic if The Hurt Locker won, because it would effectively redefine the Oscars as an arena where a work of art, its (minor) success driven by critical praise, could compete on a level playing field. If The Hurt Locker wins, it will really be the culmination of a trend that began back in 1996, the year of Fargo and Shine and Secrets & Lies, when the Oscar nominations were, for the first time, dominated by “small” independent releases. Sure, a handful of indie films (like No Country for Old Men) have won Best Picture since, but before doing so they effectively crossed over and became modest mainstream hits.

I’d like to go back to the sole point I made in (an) earlier, myopic post that I think was accurate. I said that the battle between Up in the Air and Avatar would be the most symbolic Oscar race since Forrest Gump vs. Pulp Fiction back in 1994/1995. . . . Okay, Up in the Air, while a respectable hit, didn’t forge quite the emotional connection with a lot of the audience that I’d wanted it to. But even if I did have the wrong movie, I think I had the right point: With The Hurt Locker now having all but vacuumed up the year’s critical acclaim, and with Avatar having just this week become the top-grossing domestic movie of all time, Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker is an awesomely symbolic race. It’s a clash of size, values, popularity — of essential notions of What Movie Art Is in the 21st century. A Hurt Locker victory would open the door to a new definition of Oscar glory, a defiant celebration of artistry over commerce. A win for Avatar would be, in its way, a definitive assertion of the same old same old. That’s why, more than in quite a long time, I genuinely hope that Best Picture this year goes to the best picture.”

(I couldn’t have said it better myself. Although lord knows I tried.)

Will Win: The Hurt Locker
Should Win: Up in the Air