I’d wager the average American considers December the busiest, most stressful month of the year. Holiday shopping, family gatherings, crunch time at work before end-of-year final tallies are taken, mid-season finales, what have you — if we don’t pack the days from dawn to dusk, they’ll pack themselves. For our family May is far harsher when it comes to divvying up the minutes spent outside work or sleep.
Tag Archives: lists
Every Episode Ever: Thoughts About TV Completism
My son and I liked NBC’s short-lived, suspenseful Persons Unknown so much, we had to watch the last two episodes online after NBC had given up on it, even when we hadn’t. The cast included Chadwick Boseman (42), Daisy Betts (Last Resort), and Alan Ruck (Bunheads!). Not pictured: Reggie Lee from Grimm.
In this present age of DVD boxed sets, TV series completism is easier than it’s ever been in world history. Buy a complete-series set (or collect seasons one by one as funding permits); set aside multiple weekends for binge-viewing; repeat until you’ve become an authority on the series long after it departed the airwaves. Cable networks provide reruns of many series for your catch-up pleasure, if you’re patient enough to wait until the ones you missed take their turn. Even easier to complete are those fledgling upstarts that grab your attention, air two or three episodes, and find themselves axed by ill-tempered TV execs who’d rather be flooding the airwaves with cost-effective reality stunts instead.
A Moment of Uncool Remote Post-Convention Decompression Quality Time
Greetings from busy, action-packed Illinois! After several hours spent at Day 1 of C2E2, my wife and I are glad to relax at last, off our feet and without our backpacks burdening us any longer. So far we’ve had a delightful experience, met several comics creators and a few Star Wars actors, acquired a few freebies and several quality items, and made plans for Day 2 on Saturday. Until then we’re enjoying the quiet ambiance of a particular hotel that’s treated us well before, up in the scenic village of Rosemont, down the street from the Donald E, Stephens Convention Center.
Careful readers, and anyone with a passing knowledge of the Chicago geek convention scene, may notice a discrepancy: C2E2 is being held at McCormick Place, a different convention center in a different Chicagoland section altogether, nearly twenty miles away. According to conventional convention wisdom, we’re doing it wrong.
We don’t mind. We have our reasons:
Convention Packing Checklist Recommendations: Which Item Will I Forget?
If this isn’t filled with cool things by the time the convention is over, you’re doing it wrong. (Photo credit: cdedbdme via photopin cc)
Between us I’m the one most likely to forget to bring something. After attending so many of these shindigs, you’d think I would have a system in place by now. If you’ve never attended a convention but might someday when funding and opportunity permit, I’d suggest adding a few of the following items to your personal brainstorming list. I’m sharing this not only to spur your own ideas and decision-making processes but also to remind myself before the big day. I guarantee I’ll forget something anyway.
A Few of My Favorite Bible Excerpts
This 2008 file photo taken at Historic Jamestowne, Virginia, captures a very rare moment of the author in a pulpit.
Confession time: when I launched MCC eleven months ago, I didn’t expect that aspect of my life to receive such short shrift here compared to the other parts of my life. Truth is, writing about my faith is challenging because the majority of examples set before me from other writers, family, and friends (in writing or in simple conversation) are either memorized Bible verses, Christian song lyrics, or common quotes that sound so much like real verses that everyone assumes they are and keeps passing them around. For the purpose of self-expression, I have a hard time settling for that.
Years before my life took a conscious turn toward a new spiritual direction, I was once an English major who had one critical writing lesson drummed repeatedly into my head : “Put it in your own words.” While the Bible contains a wealth of advice more useful to me than Bartlett’s Quotations or Twitter, I’m not sure what I’m accomplishing — either for the Kingdom or for myself — if all my writing and speaking consists of recycling the exact phrases and paragraphs of everyone who came before me. Becoming a living, walking re-blogger holds no appeal to me. I’m hardly the most original guy in the world, but I’d at least like to try to form my own sentences into useful structures. Problem is, all the best wisdom and aphorisms are taken, leaving me to cobble together what I can from my own odd experiences and pale talents in hopes that it doesn’t reek of copy/paste plagiarism. More often than not, my frustrated approach is if I can’t say something different, I don’t say anything at all.
I don’t recommend that mindset to anyone else. I’ll concede that’s me being stubborn. Arguably, I’ve set the bar too high for myself. We’ll see how my thoughts on the subject progress as I age and hopefully keep growing. Until then, here I am, doing the best I can with what I have. That usually means I end up focusing on my other specializations here, those that predate my faith, originated in my childhood, and are sometimes at odds with it. Thus is the conflict that fuels some of the fight scenes in the Midlife Crisis Crossover.
“Star Wars: the Clone Wars”: a Few Kind Words at the Funeral
What do you call a Clonetrooper with a Gatling laser? The winner.
Fans are hoping the completed season-six material is allowed to see the light of day in some fashion (as DVD extras? as exclusive online content? as a Disney XD miniseries? as convention bootlegs alongside The Star Wars Holiday Special?), but no promises have been made. The final episode, “The Wrong Jedi”, gave cold comfort and depressing closure to the Jedi training of the series’ central figure, young Ahsoka Tano, providing one last twist of fate that would allow her a gateway into potential further adventures, either in season six or in other media. Now that Episode VII has become Lucasfilm Job One, Ahsoka fans probably shouldn’t get their hopes up.
“Veronica Mars: the Motion Picture”: My List of Demands
File Photos Guaranteed Not to be Used on Anyone Else’s Veronica Mars Article #49: the time she went undercover as a gamer.
I later caught up with the DVDs and stuck with the show to the bitter end, by which I mean I was bitter. Eventually I moved on, but I’m not opposed to revisiting Veronica’s world if the occasion warrants.
The March 22nd issue of Entertainment Weekly summarizes creator Rob Thomas’ planned premise:
Set a decade after the show’s third and final season, the plot has Veronica returning to her hometown of Neptune, Calif., after much schooling (a bachelor’s from Stanford; a Columbia Law School degree) when she gets a distress call from ex-boyfriend Logan: His pop-star girlfriend has been murdered, and he’s the prime suspect.
“Revolution” Relaunch Refresher: Main Character Guide and Episode Recaps
If this doesn’t work, Miles is gonna look really silly.
If you’re like me and not too fond of extended hiatuses and the effect they have on TV recall, you’ve probably forgotten everything about the show except the few reminders that the “Revolution Returns” preview may have jump-started. You may also have forgotten that the first ten episodes were recapped right here on MCC, as quickly as I could cobble them together after each airing. Rest assured I plan to continue with the show, not only because I insist it has potential (despite the frequent shortcomings), but also because I want to see what sort of changes will be wrought by the “retooling” rumored to have been ordered by NBC execs. A recent TV Guide cover article confirmed that a major character won’t survive the show’s return, so you’ll need to be fully up to speed in order to place your bets.
Have You Inventoried Your Directors Lately?
Easy, time-consuming, stress-reducing exercise for movie lovers who pay too much attention to the credits: brainstorm as many film directors as you can recall; then review their output (IMDb, WikiPedia, your massive home library, wherever) and see which directors you’ve followed the most throughout your life, whether you realize it or not. To simplify the vetting processing, limit yourself to feature films only — no episodes of TV shows, no short “segments” in any movies, no writer/producer/executive producer credits whatsoever. Just the count the movies they directed that received a theatrical release.
My results tallied are as follows, for better or for worse. I’m certain I missed a few. I gave up on cross-referencing pre-1990 Disney films because it might’ve kept me up all night. Perhaps I can edit and follow up another time.
That list, then:
Revamped Facebook News Feed to Launch Thursday, Offer New Options, Invite New Complaints
I’m bored with these things, but its use works on multiple levels. Just this once.
Running an Art Museum for Fun and Profit, Part II: When It’s Time to Slash and Burn
Most of this decorative frippery could be dismantled and sold as scrap metal. (photo credit: Valerie Everett via photopin cc)
On Monday local news sources confirmed that our city’s largest art museum has eliminated twenty-nine employees (11% of the total staff) as part of their ongoing efforts to stem the losses from previous years’ shortfalls, and as part of new director/CEO Charles Venable’s plan to minimize budgetary dependence on the museum’s endowment fund, which weathered considerable battle damage during the 2008 recession. I don’t envy the position in which Venable and his survivors now find themselves, though I’m a little bitter that they didn’t even try any of my awesome ideas before swinging the axe of doom.
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be College-Bound Slobs
Dramatic reenactment of the horrors we witnessed. (photo credit: Clevergrrl via photopin cc)
My son is a high school senior preparing to transform into a college freshmen as of fall 2013. This weekend we took a road trip to the city where he’ll theoretically spend the next four years learning, growing, and becoming greater than his parents. Our family mission: scope out potential apartments for him. Due to the long list of issues that living on campus would present (on which we won’t be elaborating here — suffice it to say this is our family’s decision), his only hope for avoiding a seventy-mile daily commute will be to negotiate off-campus housing. To that end, I found a lead on a pair of potential pads at shockingly competitive prices in a wide market that’s nearly sold out as a whole for the upcoming semester. My wife and I, dutiful and curious folks that we are, drove my son up there for a pair of apartment showings to ensure we wouldn’t be exporting him and his possessions into Avon Barksdale’s prized Towers from The Wire.
Like first-world anthropologists stepping tentatively into the native habitat of an otherworldly culture, we three ventured into each of the two available cribs, whose current tenants would be finishing their current leases in time for my son’s arrival in town. None of us knew what to expect and hadn’t really prepared ourselves. Judging by the conditions we tiptoed around, neither had the tenants.
Tips for Running an Art Museum for Fun and Profit
The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which would make an awesome small-vehicle stunt-racing track. (Photo credit: Serge Melki via photopin cc)
Sadly, not all museums are enjoying the best of times today. Here in my hometown, our very own Indianapolis Museum of Art has struggled to recover after $89 million evaporated from their endowment in the 2008 recession. A recent Indianapolis Star interview with its new director, Charles Venable, revealed a few ideas the museum hopes to implement in order to recover lost ground, some of which have raised eyebrows of local patrons: a Matisse exhibit with a sizable surcharge (admission to IMA is normally free); late-night cocktail parties; and possibly an exotic car show. A few cost-cutting measures have already been taken, but financial stability can’t be achieved merely by clicking your heels three times and repeating the mantra, “Do more with less! Do more with less! Do more with less!” That way lies not wish fulfillment, but bankruptcy.
Geek/Nerd Clichés I Thought Were Over by Now
I had been looking forward to last week’s new episode of Community, “Conventions of Space and Time”, which invited us into the inner workings of an official Inspector Spacetime convention, a place where Troy and Abed could meet other fans of the obscure British TV series, indulge in a few hobby-related purchases, and generally be themselves. As someone who’s been to C2E2 twice, Wizard World Chicago four times, three GenCons so far, two Star Wars Celebrations, and several local Trek conventions, I was curious to see how the generally geek-approved series would approach such a setting. I tried to keep my expectations modest — without creator Dan Harmon around anymore, this season’s first two episodes were a little shaky. I’ve stuck with the show and keep hoping for the best.
Oscars Blow-by-Blow 2013
As my seventh annual foray into this personal fun ritual, presented below anyway is the timeline of events as I witnessed them during tonight’s ABC telecast of the 85th Academy Awards. All quotes are approximate as best as possible without benefit of rewatching, cribbing from national news outlets, or much proofreading. Our household does not own a DVR; all recollections are a combination of short-term memory and notes hastily handwritten on a legal pad, not a copy/paste reassembly of a distracted live-tweet flood. When I’m seated in front of a TV, I’d much rather watch than type.
8:30 — Our host Seth MacFarlane takes the stage with minimal intro and his first joke: “The quest to make Tommy Lee Jones laugh begins.” Naturally he jokes that he was only offered the gig after the producers were turned down by everyone else “from Whoopi on down to Ron Jeremy.” MacFarlane seems at ease and on his game most of the night, albeit with occasional edginess, such as a Rihanna/Chris Brown joke that seems more dated than offensive.
My 2013 Oscar Picks, 100% Accurate on Some Alternate Earth
I already explained in a previous entry about my predilection for the greatest spectacle in movie awarding. The last four entries were my version of a very special Oscar-themed week (located here, here, here, and here). All that remains before the big ceremony, then, is the burning question: my personal picks for the 85th Academy Awards.
If I were a card-carrying member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the following list would represent my hypothetical ballot selections. These are not my predictions as to who will win, which is a slightly different but even more useless list. To be honest, my Oscar guessing rate is abysmal. Of all the fans worldwide who go to the trouble of watching all Best Picture nominees, I’m the last one you want to ask for hot gambling tips. I’m not plugged in to the Hollywood zeitgeist, the trendiest groupthink sects, or nearly as many movie news sites as I ought to be. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve jinxed a lot of nominees in previous years and owe a round of apologies to numerous filmmakers who lost their races specifically because I picked them. (Sorry about that, The Social Network. My fault.)
A Few Best Picture Nominees That Didn’t Deserve Better
As mentioned previously, I’ve seen every Academy Award winner for Best Picture from Wings to The Artist, retaining varying degrees of recollection. I’ve also seen every Best Picture nominee from 1997 to the present, and have embarked on a slow, low-priority, extra-long-term quest to see how far backwards in time I can extend that date. Right now I’m stalled on 1996 because the DVD version of Secrets & Lies is out of print, secondhand copies are priced much higher than I’d prefer, and I’ve never caught it airing on a cable network. Someday I’ll overcome that obstacle and continue down the line in reverse order.
I watched a lot of those winners and nominees on cruddy VHS copies, many recorded from Turner Classic Movies at EP speed for maximum storage conservation, and therefore suffered subpar A/V quality and the dreaded pan-‘n’-scan method that ruined countless widescreen films for the sake of home video as it existed back then. I wouldn’t mind revisiting some past winners and nominees in upgraded formats as time and funding allow. (Tonight, for example, I watched The Sound of Music on Blu-ray, my first time seeing the original widescreen presentation with the composition and gorgeous Alpine scenery intact. Massive difference.)
The following list is a sampling of Best Picture nominees that not only lost the Oscar, but also lost me when I did my best to stomach them, and won’t entice me to an encore presentation, not even as a thrifty Blu-ray with myriad extras.
The loser nominees are:
* Chocolat. The citizens of an all-Catholic town who’ve apparently never studied the Bible find themselves easily tempted away from their convictions during Lent when a dismissive heathen outsider opens a chocolate shop and mocks their fasting. I can see the groundwork laid here for a meaty Stephen King novel, if we modify Act Two so that the lady turns out to be an underworld minion whose Satanic powers manifest in the form of evil bonbons. Call it Needful Things 2: Day of the Truffles. Alas, no, the lady is typical and the self-righteous moral of the story is snacks are better than God. Though the town has other underlying problems that sugar somehow cures, my diagnosis would be that the town merely needed a more competent minister to guide and edify that particular flock.
* The Reader. My wife doesn’t share my quixotic quest and is consequently under no obligation to see films against her will. If I think a film has merit, I’ll regale her with a précis of the better parts, spoilers and all. Some films, I really don’t want to summarize. No loyal husband wants to confront the innocent question of “How was the movie?” with an answer like “It was basically Kate Winslet having lots of wild sex with a teenager.” In the theater I tried to stay focused on her character’s role as a gruff German guard who may or may not have been a Nazi war criminal. I lost that focus completely when her deep, dark secret — which I predicted several minutes in advance — reminded me of the “Oscar Clip” scene from Wayne’s World. After my little flashback, I couldn’t stop laughing all through her deadly serious court trial. So that ended poorly.
A Few Best Picture Nominees That Deserved Better
Everyone who watches the Academy Awards has their disagreements with the Academy. Not one living person would look at the complete list of Best Picture nominees and argue that the right movie has won every single year since Wings. We all have our own ideas about what makes one movie better than other movies. The idea of separate, distinct works of art being forced to compete against each other in an expensive dog-and-pony show may seem crass, especially considering the plethora of talents, genres, budgets, studio systems, sweetheart agent deals, and marketing departments that are fundamentally incomparable in any reasonable aesthetic discussion. Big-budget award-grubbing machines and high-minded shoestring-budget indie flicks shouldn’t be fighting each other; they should be working side-by-side, providing viewers with a vast assortment of reasons for film lovers to remain invested in the medium, and maybe even teaming up for the occasional crossover.
Just the same, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences insists on the annual flickfights. Sometimes Academy voters pick the right winner. Sometimes they struggle with hard choices. Sometimes they get it wrong. Sometimes they do it on purpose to upset the rest of the world, or at least me specifically.
The following Best Picture nominees from decades past represent a few differences of opinion between my biases and the questionable preferences of the Hollywood voting majority. While I have the advantage of limited, selfish hindsight peering back from outside their contemporary context, they have the advantage of being famous artists and filmmakers whose personal valets make more in a month than I do in a year. Thus do they have the privilege of deciding whose names are engraved on the statues and which ones have to settle for “I coulda been a contendah” jokes.
Some of those nominees are:
* The Thin Man (1934). Not that I have anything against the fun romance of It Happened One Night, but Nick and Nora Charles are five times the fun, not to mention one of the most solid husband/wife couples in anything ever, fellow detectives or otherwise. Living in a bygone era where “politically incorrect” wasn’t a thing yet, their methodology was questionable (gather all the suspects and hope someone tips their hand? Foolish but genius); Nick’s alcohol dependence was played for a few laughs but not taken entirely for granted (he grudgingly quit drinking in later films); and their relationship was 100% unflappably rock-solid (in one hectic scene, Nick saves Nora from a bullet by punching her in the face, somehow without destroying their marriage — good luck pulling off that trick outside a tasteless R-rated comedy today). “They don’t make ’em like they used to” doesn’t begin to describe the series’ legacy. The happy couple regrettably didn’t stand a chance against a shirtless Clark Gable.
A Few of My Least Favorite Best Picture Winners
After yesterday’s mandatory entry, it’s still the week before the Academy Awards ceremony, when Oscar fans have the best excuse to wax eloquent about the greatest awards show of all time. Also, they can indulge in as much hyperbole as they want without fear of retribution. ‘Tis the season.
As I mentioned yesterday, I saw all the Best Picture winners over the course of a several-year journey back in the 1990s. Some were invaluable enterprises that I’m glad I went out of my way to catch. Some…not so much. It’s been my geek experience that when you dedicate yourself to absolute completism on a given subject without fail or compromise, you find yourself having to tolerate a lot of damaged goods that you’ll regret later, in exchange for those bragging rights.
My list of the most regrettable Best Picture winners to date is thankfully shorter than my Best Best Pictures list. I’ve seen several Best Picture nominees that were far more toxic than most of these, but that doesn’t improve their own letter grades in my amateur-appreciator book.
Presented in no conscious order:
* The English Patient. Seinfeld mocked this beloved non-linear adaptation years before I saw it. I allowed it an impartial chance to stand or fall on its own merits nonetheless. I even watched it twice in order to grasp the complexities of the interwoven timelines. Despite my efforts, it never had a chance. Fun trivia: stories in which I’m expected to sympathize with adulterers will find me next to impossible to win over. It’s a sore spot inflicted by my own personal history, a flagrant bias I have no interest in setting aside. Out of Africa failed me for this same reason, though at least Meryl Streep didn’t compound her sins by abetting the Nazis in the name of lust.
A Few of My Favorite Best Picture Winners
It’s that time of year again, the week before the Academy Awards ceremony, when anyone who pontificates online about movies to any degree is compelled to reflect on Oscar winners of years past and mine their history for writing material in lieu of relevant news updates and Oscar pool handicapping. I suppose I should add my two cents quickly, lest I risk being last in line, though I’m sure all mine are taken by other Oscar fans now, if not necessarily in matching quantity. Years ago I completed a lengthy quest to see every Best Picture winner from Wings to the present, just to see what would happen. Some I’ve long since forgotten, some were travesties I wish I could unsee, but many were worthwhile experiences.
As with all such lists, the following is purely subjective, not constrained by your mortal ideas about standards of fairness or codified film-school guidelines, and rife with random acts of unjustified, whimsical favoritism. This is my Best Best Pictures Ever list. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Because ranking them against each other would require extensive arguments against myself that I couldn’t possibly win, these are presented in no intentional order:
* My Fair Lady. The first musical I ever enjoyed in my life that wasn’t a cartoon or a puppet show. The idea of better living through diction and poise lessons was fascinating in my youth. Also, the songs are catchy despite their lack of American Idol vocal sheen, and Eliza’s Cockney scream at the horse race cracks me up every time.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 