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  • December 2007

This is brilliant.

There are a lot of good things about HBO’s new series In Treatment. I won’t be sharing my thoughts on any of them, however, because HBO has pissed me off.

Having watched the very first episode of In Treatment while visiting family (I cannot afford cable at home, a result of “the artist’s life”), and having enjoyed it enough to want to watch more of the show, I did some research when I got home and was surprised to find that HBO was offering the show online, for free, via an iTunes podcast. This seemed too good to be true, but I tried downloading the episodes from the podcast, and it worked, so I shrugged and decided to just not worry about it. This was a pleasant feeling, and I privately congratulated HBO on the marketing move. I was still convinced that something fishy was going on, but my naive prediction was that I would be allowed to watch the first season of the show online, in this manner, before then being cut off.

This prospect did not bother me. I understand that even when your total production budget has been dramatically reduced - due to the fact that you shoot 90% of your show in one room, and that the majority of your cinematography consists of filming two actors sitting across from one another, at only a few different camera angles and under the same lighting arrangement - that these things cost money.

So on my merry way to therapy I went, for approximately three weeks. Due to the different sort of format they use for the show (each week features five different original episodes, but I am not going to go into any more detail, because I’m pissed off) I was able to watch fifteen half hour episodes, online, for free. That’s seven and a half hours of free premium entertainment. More than just a taste, this represents several separate meals. They might have been good meals, too. Actually, I can’t remember. I’m pissed off. Read more

Excuse the melodramatic headline for this post, but I just spent way too much time writing it, and am too tired and depressed to come up with an original catchy title. Thus, the lazy man’s catchy title. Consider your curiosity exploited. Now, read.

* * *

I was going to let this one go - so as not to lower myself too much - but I think this particular example of cultural starvation/degeneration is too big and ugly to ignore. Cheap and dirty I have promised, so cheap and dirty I will deliver.

Except that this, a recent photo spread in New York Magazine featuring Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe in “The Last Sitting,” also known as the last photo shoot Monroe did before her death, actually represents more of an opposite to the sort of “cheap and dirty stuff” that I wrote about in my grand old furious introduction. Before I go on, I should relay a fact that New York Magazine takes some minor pains to point out with its pink-lettered parenthetical reminder within the caption link for the photo spread on its main fashion page, that the original photo shoot, as well as the desperate and awful reproduction, features nudity. So if you somehow ended up here as part of a search for Lohan boobie, and Lohan boobie only, follow this link and be gone.

Look, I’m sure that I don’t have to go into too much detail about why the very existence of these photos represent a big ugly cultural step backwards, but for the sake of catharsis, and also because I’m currently holding onto what some might consider to be a surprising sub-opinion in regards to the topic, let’s do it… Read more

I wrote the first sentence of this post three times before I gave up. You are now reading a sentence about a sentence. You are now reading a post about a post - no, not even that - you are reading a post about a post that never was and never will be. And the saddest part of the whole thing isn’t that you’re going to keep reading or that I’m going to keep writing. No. The saddest part is that, beyond this, neither of us have much choice in the matter. This never-post now does exist, despite being comprised of essentially nothing.

There are three reasons for this - why it exists in spite of its non-existence. Bang they come:

• It really has all been done before, and then some, so what else is there to do but dispense with the lie and just make something out of nothing? If you don’t understand what I mean by this, or if you disagree, consider yourself lucky. Then go out and slowly educate yourself. Misery loves company. I’ll see you later.
• You’re bored. You need something to do or to read, because at this moment, for some reason, you are either incapable of “watching” or have decided to take a break from “watching.” Like me, you sometimes fly towards a piece of news, writing, or entertainment, not so much for the thing itself but because you’ve just become accustomed to the process. You’ve grown up along with media bombardment. The television and the advertisements and the movies and the music have promised you a full, exciting, glamorous life, shared in the company of beauty, and the newspapers and the television anchors and the tabloids have provided you with enough proof to support the claim that life tends more towards the opposite. So, hey, if you can’t quite live life to it’s fullest, and, further, if everything sucks, you might as well keep yourself comfortable and occupied.
• It is what The Man wants. I don’t know who exactly The Man is anymore, I think maybe we’re all The Man (guilty by association) but, regardless, I think He wants us to pay attention to nothing, to discuss nothing, to dissect nothing, and dress nothing up in new clothes each year, so that he can continue to do what he does best. What does he do best? You may be surprised to hear see me skip over the usual answers of “control you,” or “control your money,” or “control your soul” - but, really, I don’t think he puts much effort into any of these things anymore. The Man, now, wants something simpler…something more essential and basic.

He wants victory over movement. This is the ultimate definition of control. Having gotten things to a point where even the poor can get by in terms of the bare essentials - see this absolutely ridiculous article about why “the poor are doing just fine” for a sound bite from one of The Man’s top henchmen (careful, don’t be fooled, it’s written with authority, puts forward its ugly opinion without using any exact ugly words, and contains charts!) - The Man now wants to take things one step further. He has control over the system, but the system isn’t always as dependable as he’d like it to be, and he knows that.

Read more

“…ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex.”

What it fails to add, in terms of follow up advice: “if the answer is no, ask yourself if it’s worth it to keep on living.”

I joke, I kid, I josh.

If you really aren’t healthy enough for sex, though, you could always do what my old pal D.H. Lawrence did when it happened to him, and write the raunchiest novel in the world (at the time) to make up for things.

Boink boink.

I can almost promise that I will attempt to try to write an actual, lengthy, engaging post - complete with points and anecdotes and everything - sometime soon.

Boink!

Second Skin is a documentary playing at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.

To quote a quote (from this page), the film provides “an intimate look at people whose lives have become transformed by the virtual worlds in online games such as World of Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life.”

Needless to say, I will be checking it out ASAP. Why did I just say that?

Visit this page, and scroll down to the green postcard that reads: “I spend a lot of time making my boring life look exciting on Facebook.”

Please also read what’s written below, a reply to the postcard that just might manage to shine a positive light on the situation.

In case you’ve never visited the site that I just linked to, it’s called Post Secret. It’s a blog slash (/!) community art project where people anonymously write a private and/or personal secret onto an actual postcard and send the card to a guy named Frank (the originator/creator of the project). Frank reads the secrets, scans them into digital images, and puts them on the site. Secrets range from the hilarious to the downright unnerving. Here’s more information. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole thing.

The point: don’t spend too much time trying to make something look like something else. Especially when that thing is your life, and especially when, deep down, you know better.

End fortune cookie.

The title of this post may or may not make sense. At the very least, it’s funny, and what more do you need from life than the occasional chuckle. I mean, assuming you aren’t homeless or something awful like that.

NOTE: Because I’m sure that someone will eventually stumble upon this post and take offense on behalf of the homeless, please know that I am joking. Also, if you’re that hypothetical someone, get away and get a life.

Anyway, on to what’s actually important.

If you is a car-driving reader, check out this article from The New York Times. In case you’re too lazy or disinterested to click, I’ll just forward the information that it provides - that Exxon Mobil has set yet another profit record “because of surging oil prices.”

Odd choice of an explanation, “because of surging oil prices.” I wouldn’t quite put it that way.

But really, in this time of economic downturn (to put things mildly), it’s great to see that some companies are persevering. Makes you proud to be an American.

Oh, and for any hippies who might be thinking “this is yet another reason why we should switch to ethanol fuel!” think again.

Mark my words, hippies, we may very well go the ethanol way, but if we do, the levels of consumer exploitation will remain the same. Sure, the planet will be cleaner, it will live a little longer, but even big business has to allow for that necessity. It’s hard to squeeze a dollar out of a drowning man.

Edit: Maybe ethanol ain’t the way after all…