TMI, Or, Too Much Information? Also, Cake.

I’ve been composing this blog mentally since listening to a discussion of the critical reaction to The Killing on the “Firewall & Iceberg” podcast this morning, and it’s gone through a variety of thesis statements and witty titles. I was going to channel my inner Neil Gaiman and call it “Veena Sud Is Not Your Bitch,” until I realized that I have no inner Neil Gaiman and didn’t want to make a fool of myself by presuming so, even facetiously. Then I was going to go on a little Internet Rant about all those people going on Internet Rants about the ending of a show they already didn’t like, but didn’t like even more come Monday morning, but the irony/hypocrisy seized my fingers and I was unable to type. Then it was time for lunch, which was brought to me by a playdate’s parent for free. I didn’t even have to change out of my bathing suit.*

Jack in the Box Egg Rolls**

*Not Shown

**I always thought it was weird that a fast food restaurant could get right old school egg rolls of the kind you can’t even get at Chinese restaurants anymore, until I learned that they make them with MSG. I remember well the year MSG disappeared from all the Chinese restaurants for “health reasons” and “popular demand,” because it was the year egg drop soup became watery and I had to move on to hot and sour.

You can read in a variety of places all about how the show runner of The Killing broke an implicit contract with viewers and insulted them with the ending of the first season and wasted three months of Sundays of people’s time and all kinds of invective ranging from carefully analytic to frothy tirades. All kinds. Critics are mad, fans are mad, and I don’t really understand the rage, but I do understand that there’s rage and there’s Internet Rage, and Internet Rage is a group process that doesn’t necessarily reflect actual emotions on the other side of the keyboard. If I can go by my own habits and the habits of people I post with on boards that discuss TV and other topics. For example, a particularly upsetting episode of, say, The Office Season 3, could have had people seething and hollering in the episode thread, but being funny and charming one minute later in the job thread or the chit chat thread.

Now I have to take a break to put a crumb coat on a cake I’m baking for Husband’s 60-year-old coworker who had a JoP wedding over the weekend and who, if I really had to guess, probably doesn’t need anything as a present. My Aceling of Cakes was excited about making a tiered cake for a while, and claimed first rights to cut off the dome, but now he’s crapping out on the crumb coat. Dude, no one wants to frost the crumb coat. It is admittedly the suckiest of the coats, but it’s the most necessary, especially on a pretend wedding cake with frosting tinted very slightly off-white because I have only real vanilla extract in the house instead that artificial colorless vanilla stuff.

Yes, I Did Drink All That Soda Today

Podcast Roundup–The LOST Collection

I have been very excited for the past few weeks about the return of Lost (and the magnificence that is Benjamin Linus) this month. This is crazy to say, but I am almost as excited about the return of the Lost podcasts, too! One watches an episode of Lost and ends up with ideas–ideas that can’t always be expressed with family members (not watching it, or watching it sleepy) or online (too slow! and my paragraphs are too long). There’s a real pleasure, too, in grocery shopping at 11:00 PM not just by yourself (a wonderful pleasure) but with a podcast to rehash the show for you. Makes you feel smart. Also, it’s like you are watching TV but you are also getting something else done. I haven’t noticed that it affects my grocery selections in a negative way, either.

It was a while after I got the iPod before I thought to look up podcasts for Lost. I did a Google search for the best one, I cruised the iTunes reviews, and I listened to a couple. People love the Jack and Jay podcast, or whatever it’s called, and I really wanted to like it because they analyze music, which would be amazing. Unfortunately, the first episode I listened to spent at least five minutes talking and talking about some inside joke involving an orange comforter. It showed no signs of stopping. As an outsider, I didn’t think it was very funny, and so–alas!–it didn’t make the cut. I am probably missing out on all kinds of spectacularness. Such is life.

So I ended up at two different ones, both of which I kept (for very different reasons): “LOSTCasts” and “The Transmission.”

LOSTCasts
“LOSTCasts” describes itself as an analysis of “the mysteries, theories and speculation surrounding the show.” As they say on the  website, they read the forums so you don’t have to. Long story short: Thank god someone is! I’d never be able to find them all.

If you listen to the “That’s What She Said” Office podcast, this one would remind you of it. It’s a panel of guys going pretty in-depth on the program, running about an hour and twenty minutes each time. It’s been so long that I’ve listened that I forget everyone’s names, but there is a leader, and then one or two reliable back-ups. Once I heard a woman join in. It’s not a podcast I listened to from the beginning; I only picked it up Season 4. I did try to go back and listen to the old episodes that were recorded as the show was airing in earlier seasons, but it wasn’t that interesting. So much of the podcast is speculation that’s really, really cool to participate in, but once an answer has been revealed on the show, it’s too frustrating to listen to a five-minute exploration of an idea that you retroactively know goes nowhere. But that is beside the point.

I prefer podcasts recorded by panels to solo performers, and these guys do a good give and take that keeps me interested. The change of voices helps me focus on the podcast, which is very good because I am usually listening to the iPod when I am doing something else. I can fall into a trance pretty quickly, and I hate getting lost and rewinding.

The biggest complaint I read about this podcast on iTunes is what I find most appealing: They go through all the Wikipedia pages and all the Lostpedia pages and look up every book and song and name that appears in the show and explain the background information and speculate on its relevance. Yes. They will read aloud from a Wikipedia page that I could access and read myself. But who are these people complaining about it? Are people really taking notes as they watch the show, looking everything up, and thinking it over in the four or five days before the podcast airs and then getting bored with conclusions that the LOSTCast panel draws? Dude. Maybe they all have office jobs. It’s a task I certainly don’t mind outsourcing, to Americans even. Maybe this is a key behavior that separates true fans from the hacks. Or maybe I can spin this in my favor by saying I am just too busy and too highly paid to do the grunt work myself, and rely on such a staff to provide me with the basics so I can get the real thinking done. Whatever the case may be, I am grateful to have a consolidated source of all this information. And even though you can definitely tell when the host stops talking and starts reading, he does a very good job of reading. The time always passes too quickly.

The one episode I’ve heard that I didn’t like was towards the end of season 4, when the main host wasn’t there. He’s definitely the leader, so far as pacing the show goes. They also seemed to rush through the last three episodes, but that I cannot blame anyone for. I was disappointed, but stuff comes up.

The show has a basic website, with a discussion board. The discussion board is pretty slow, but on the main page there is a listing for each episode of the show that airs, with comments enabled. I’ve read a lot of really smart comments; for season four you’d rarely see fewer than thirty per episode, and they stay somewhat active even as new episodes air. I left one or two messages in both places, but I am afraid I can’t participate in Advanced Level Lost. All my theories are always wrong, and I never remember all the small details from past episodes that everyone else does, which shoots gaping holes in any theory I come up with. I have made my peace with that. I still love reading the comments.

The Transmission
“The Transmission” is described as a “friendly conversation among friends and fellow fans.” Long story short: That is exactly why I like it.

“The Transmission” is to “LOSTCast” as “The Office Alliance” podcast is to “That’s What She Said.” “The Transmission” is no longer than forty-five minutes usually, and it sticks to its schedule. Tangents might be interesting to follow, but they won’t drag a conversation out if it starts to back up the other segments. For reasons I can’t remember, I had trouble getting into this podcast. I think it was the episode recap that seemed like a waste of time, but now I totally rely on it. Once I actually listened to one, I realized how easy it is to overlook parts of the show.

“The Transmission” is hosted by Ryan and Jen, a married couple who (lucky!) live in Hawaii and watch Lost together (lucky!). Like “LOSTCast,” I didn’t tune into this podcast until season 4. Turns out the podcast has a different format than it used to, one that the hosts think has been much improved. They start with fast-paced recap of the episode’s events, move into their personal analysis, identify filming locations, and then read and discuss voicemails, emails, and blog posts. They also have this segment called “The Forward Cabin,” in which they discuss spoilers. I never used to listen to it, but during the very long break between seasons I heard one or two things, and it was much milder than I expected. They live in Hawaii and people visit Hawaii, and you get reports on what people have observed being filmed. They’ll say things like so and so character was seen in this kind of costume in front of a building they called X restaurant. I’ve enjoyed hearing inside comments like that, but it was a long, slow period for reporting. Once the episodes start up again, I’ll probably stop listening to the spoilers. I don’t really like hearing episode summaries or discussions of scenes from next week.

Ryan and Jen really have their rhythm down. What’s nice about this pair is that if one is missing, the podcast doesn’t fall apart. I don’t want to say that this podcast is shallower than the LOSTCast, but they do not get into the same level of background detail. “The Transmission” has been recording new podcasts for old episodes fairly regularly throughout the hiatus, so they are fresher in my mind, but it seems like they do a better job of personally relating to the characters’ dilemmas than the LOSTCast panel does. They touch on all the details, and explain them, but they spend just as much time discussing character motivations. I think their “eight minutes or less” recaps are very valuable… even after only a few days, I do forget some of the secondary plot points.

I am undecided if I like hearing the voicemails in their entirety. “The Office Alliance” plays them in full, too, and although it’s nice to hear new voices, and those new voices often have something interesting to talk about, they are just too long. You’ve left voicemails for people–it’s too hard to get to the point. Some of them go for two minutes. Two minutes of answering machine is boring. Of course, if I were the one to leave a message and hear it on the air, I’d be thrilled! I think that playing voicemails probably strengthens the sense of community between the podcast and all the listeners. That’s probably the primary characteristic of this podcast–Ryan and Jen aren’t dispensing information. They are facilitating a big conversation. Their experience of watching the show seems to be very much like my experience, and I enjoy hearing how they come to their opinions about characters and plot turns and what the writers are doing. It’s not particularly intellectual, and it’s something I have the time to do by myself, but it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

This podcast has an enhanced version, which I’ve never seen. I don’t really read their website, but they refer to particular comments by name as if there are definite regulars. I’m sure it would be an easy group to fall in with, because everyone seems to be so nice. I imagine that’s some kind of Hawaii effect. A nice feature of the website is the filming locations page, which identifies and describes the buildings and beaches that the episodes use. If I were planning a trip to Hawaii, I’d totally plan an afternoon around checking out some of the locations. My friend Dennis went and saw the Others compound, or else the huts that Kate, Jack, and Michael were taken to before Michael went off with Walt.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get lots of good information out of LOSTCast but I have lots of fun listening to “The Transmission.” I think they are very good companion pieces.

Then We Came to the End

By Joshua Ferris

We will be reading this for April’s book club meeting. Thank! God! is all I have to say. Why does What Is the What keep coming up on our lists and what fixations do these young things have with genocide?

It’s waiting for me at the library. Big-time fun waits for me tomorrow when I go get it. Whoo. hoo.

March 30: UPDATE
OK, I read the book. It was about some horrible people and I liked it well enough (too insecure about myself to actually wonder which of those characters was me at work for fear of learning the answer), but it was OK. And then I hit the Lynn chapter, and it was wonderful. And then I read the after Lynn stuff, where they don’t know what to do while she’s in denial, and it was wonderful. And then the Tom Mota stuff was a little silly, although I could see how it fit with the rest of the book and maybe even with the character, who was a favorite character. I thought Tom was well-drawn, as was Marcia and Joe Piper, at least to the point that I understood things about their personalities outside of work despite the fact that the book didn’t go outside of work.

And then I hit the end of Part Two and got to the epilogue, which was derivative at best. Quitting cube culture to go work outside is straight out of Office Space; Ben and Marcia’s romance is straight out of The Office. I didn’t like everyone going to a book reading and hearing lines from the middle of the book. I didn’t like that Janine turned to Harleys. I didn’t like Tom Mota being killed by friendly fire, and not because I liked him or that I’m pro-war or any politic or personal reason. It just seemed like a sort of extraneous thing to bring up. Just leave him in the army. Why get political, even in a small way? It’s distracting. The epilogue/part 3 was as amusing and entertaining as the rest of it, but I didn’t understand its purpose. I think the last few pages could maybe have been retained–the reunion stuff was pretty good–but all that build-up, with the Godfather lines… eh.

I have thought a lot about the voice of the novel. I always like to think of the first-person narrator as a character who reveals things without meaning to, and who filters the events of a novel for whatever reason. This first-person novel really created a transparent narrator. I guess that’s an accomplishment. Try as I might, I cannot put any personality to the narrator. I suppose it’s appropriate to have a completely shallow storyteller deliver a tale about the shallowness of work relationships.

After reading this book, I want to reconnect with old coworkers even less. Why oh why did I spend all that time creating my profile on LinkedIn?

Fabulous Prizes at Northern Attack!

I am posting up a storm today, or until the novelty of having a blog wears off. My street in Happysmiley Town is hosting a neighborhood contest for fans of the American television show, The Office. We are in the second week of an eight-week contest, and it is not too late to play. We are competing for fabulous prizes. Visit http://forums.northernattack.com for details. They are “stickied” threads at the top of the page; “Hiatus Entertainus” has general rules and chatter about the contest, including how to vote, and the weekly challenges have their own threads. Lest you think you are too late, participants’ lowest weekly scores are thrown out during judging so it won’t matter that you’ve missed the first week. But the deadlines for entries is Sunday night (the 17th) at midnight Pacific (-8 from UTC). You must be a member to join or vote, but nothing bad or annoying will happen to you or your email account if you become a member. It is the classiest place in Happysmiley Town that I have ever visited, and I consider myself lucky to live there.

Be warned, though. I am competing. But I am also contributing a prize. Perhaps that will turn out to be some kind of zero-sum game. I’ll have to think about the math for that.

Why Does My Work Ethic Suck?

The title of this blog should say it all. And that is all I have time to say. If I took the time to write more, I’d suffer from a poor work ethic AND stabbing guilt pains. As it is I’m jacked up on DC (street for Diet Coke) and forcing the husband to watch the children all day. He feels like he is wasting his day because they are preventing him from getting work done. Hopefully this experience will reduce the number of scornful looks I get when it is finally revealed at the end of a day that I managed to watch two episodes of Star Trek but not put any laundry away.

OK. Back to working for money. After one last check of the Office Discussion Board I habituate, of course. Why aren’t any of those bastards posting new comments?

A Lost Haiku–And Something about the Fancy New Beesly

Sawyer, Sawyer, Jin,
Desmond, and even Sayid,
but not so much Jack.

Hadn’t really thought about putting Desmond on the list until Wednesday’s episode, which I didn’t really like. Maybe I had a bad mood come over me. Ten PM is pretty late to watch content to commercials at a ratio of two minutes to one. I did so enjoy viewing this show on DVD! I am so impatient with the weekly, interrupted broadcast that ordinary people endure.

But I endure it for The Office! Pam’s first presentation at an artist in an art show was shown last night and it made me a little sick for her. I wonder if she’s been encouraging this alter-ego of herself as a potential artist to counter her reality as Roy’s wife. Now that she isn’t playing the role of Roy’s wife she has to play the role of artist in training, but I did not get the impression that she is actually very into art at all. Sure she’s a good at drawing, but come on. A tape dispenser? A stapler? They were true to life reproductions… and her presentation was despicable. Thumbtacks? Has she ever even been to an art show? Does she even talk to people in her class? The pictures should have been mounted at least. Sure, it’s good that she is finally exploring her supposed dream to be an artist, but Oscar is right: She lacks courage and honesty, in her art and in her life.

Because everything must of course come back to me…

I used to pretend I wanted to be a writer. I pretended this for a very long time… probably twenty years. Now, a good chunk of those years were in elementary through high school, where “writing” includes many genre and it’s all about composition rather than structure. And I was very, very good at it. I am an excellent writer. But what did I study in college? Literature. In grad school? Literature. I took writing courses and did OK. In my grad school writing course (with undergraduates) the professor complimented my stuff but said it was all the same and that I should explore more. I was invited to join a writing group. I went twice monthly for years. (Maybe three years, but that’s plural.) It was fun. Everyone was nice and also good writers; we submitted work every other month or so, critiqued our projects, and I started writing a novel. Everyone liked it. The characters were interesting, my phrases clever, and I ended up producing more than a hundred pages of it.

Then the group wanted to change meetings from Tuesdays (or something) to Friday nights and I balked. I did not want to go to writing group every other Friday night, for the reason that it was Friday night and I got invited to other things then. When it came down to it, I was not that interested in writing. It was fun to have a novel in progress and I really liked analyzing everyone else’s stuff, but I wasn’t about to make any sacrifices for it. It was a minor revelation but a major one, if that makes sense.

I am an excellent editor. I am an excellent essay writer. Let’s boast some more: I got a superior rating on my graduate exit exam, something that doesn’t happen every year for any student. You wouldn’t believe the essay I wrote on the spot basically on Faulkner’s short story “The Bear.” I went back to the office after the tests were graded to see if I could reread it but they’d already shredded it and I almost cried. I can read someone’s stuff and make it better. I can even write my own stuff to amuse myself or to impress others. But the lovely art of fiction creation is not my path to pursue. I don’t even like reading poetry. I never have. I equate that to not liking free jazz at all… and I was an excellent musician in high school. For some reason, though, the epiphany that I liked accompanying singers and other musicians (and doing a little bit of vocal direction) more than performing solo came early. Not sure why. I used to be a very good piano player, too. But I was surrounded by really, really, really good musicians who could actually improvise and play more than one instrument. I understood my place in the pecking order in the music department, but in the high school English department I was the frikkin star. (Or had the attitude to believe it, but I did win an award!)

Perhaps I’m not a risk-taker. Perhaps I lack courage, like Pam. But I’m really interested to see if she’ll be written to play out the role of bad artist or if she’ll get the chance to realize that she can transfer her technical art skills (her tape dispenser really looked like a tape dispenser) into something creative that actually captures her fancy. She has already shown the knack for improvising arty things without a lot of notice to please large groups: a bird coffin, Office Olympics medals, and doodling passes her time. I don’t know enough about art to propose any applied art careers besides interior design and graphic design (and some aspects of event planning), but I hope she looks around more. Hell, just looking at the want ads to see what’s out there would open up her perspective. But give up this portrait of the artist as a young receptionist business… if she was really interested in art she would have been to an art show before now… she would have invested herself enough in the artistic process to find out how to present her work… she would have done SOMETHING that showed her to be something other than a poser. I just don’t think she cares. Now drop the role and do something you really want to do!

And that’s all I have to say about that.

How Could I Forget?

It’s thanks to my Office forum friends that I am posting a new blog after months and months. For a long time, that’s been the only show on television I’ve been watching–effort, timing, overused VCR cassette that adds a hissing sound to everything I try to tape (I know there are new cassettes available for sale still somewhere), but last year Richard and I were quite into Lost. We’d been watching it on DVD the entire first two seasons at a time, and it was wonderful. But when I tried to watch it last autumn, I couldn’t manage to get it going. Partly I can blame the Fella… he figured out how to press buttons on remotes right around then and the episodes we were taping were taped with Spanish audio. Then we tried to watch them on abc.com at four frames a second and couldn’t take it. My mother has been DVRing them all year but so much else comes up on her wonderful, wonderful cable menu that it just wasn’t a priority.

Officer Dennis calls today to remind me that Lost was resuming tonight. So I made an attempt to “catch up” on the online episodes, and when I’m sitting on a couch with a laptop with potato chips and husband isn’t complaining about the video quality, it’s quite a cozy viewing experience. (He’s downstairs on the new, better computer watching some libertarian film called “From Freedom to Fascism” that his friend recommended. I just can’t sit down and do that. His friend, by the way, is actually participating in the Free State Project in New Hampshire. You know–live free or die? Well, some guy is setting up to test that by refusing to pay income taxes and everyone expects it to go all Waco. It’s horrible. I wonder what will actually happen. But enough of that side note…)

The moral of the story is that I can’t believe I forgot how smoking hot Sawyer and Jin and Sayid are. My god. I remembered that I used to know, but it hit me in the gut when I actually saw them again. And I’m not usually the type to fall for the celebrity! And that guy Henry who’s name isn’t really Henry looks so much like my friend Mike from college. How nice to indulge in nostalgia, too.

I should check to see if Mike is on here. Probably not. I think I also forgot how addictive this site could be. Now I have two Internet places to waste time on, and my self-discipline deteriorates by the day.