A New Hope

Now that so many international readers have come to rely on this blog for factual, fair and balanced commentary on cultural trends and geo-political issues, I feel my neglect may have far reaching consequences. A responsible blogger would try to correct this, but sadly, that blogger isn't me. I have a bunch of other shit on my plate. I will however throw you all this one bone with a few fragments of meat on it.

Sarah Silverman is the new hope we've all been waiting for in these dark times. If you're a cultured gentleman like myself, you have watched Youtube avidly for new clips of her ever since her ode to Matt Damon. Some of you are not as intellectual as I am, so you might not have noticed that youtube clips of her come and go rather quickly. Her poop song is sadly no longer with us. But it has already inspired a generation of young girls with guitars. We have this duet. And this girl has covered it as a solo act. When I was her age, girls had stupid role models and when they picked up a guitar to sing something, it was some kumbayah bullshit that teachers thought would promote the welfare of baby seals or something. I really envy the generation that grew up under the loving umbrella of Al Gore's internets. If you missed Sarah's original performance of that song, you missed something very special and you will have to wait until they get that show onto Netflix.

There was a bit of discussion over at SWC about whether the world was in better or worse shape than 20 years ago. If this doesn't settle that question for you, I don't know what will.

Holding Up

The first disc of Deadwood was only moderately interesting. A friend urged me to give it another chance, I did and it pulled me in for the first two seasons. That's understating it a lot actually. It had me dying for the next episode. The dialogue was original in ways I just couldn't get enough of. Then the 3rd season came along and nothing made sense and it seemed all like they were just plugging random shit into some formula. I decided I will eventually re-watch the first two seasons and see how much of the fascination was just the newness of the concept and how much it still keeps my attention. This suburban dialogue in Deadwood style made me laugh out loud and reminded me of it.

I'm re-watching Entourage and Weeds first seasons. Weeds is only sometimes as hilarious as it continuously was the first time I watched it. I have a feeling the 2nd and 3rd seasons will hold up better over time because they really get into the theme of how many ways life in the suburbs is completely fucked. Entourage is awesome right out of the gate. One literature professor commented on how similar the culture portrayed in that show is to the Japanese Heian court culture of the 11th century and any other court culture really. And it just reminds me of how unforgiveably lame Tudors was. They could have had another Entourage, only with violence on top of sex. You can tell that's what they were going for. But they put zero effort into it. Just string the sex and violence together and hope those will carry the show seems to have been the approach and it's a huge waste of good material. With the Tudor court, you really have the material for something as good as Entourage or better. It's really a shame the way that they wasted it.

But the best show of all time is still Firefly, followed by The Wire. They are both shows you can re-watch a year or so later and see things you missed before and other things you're glad to have in your memory.