Reading is Fundamental

[robotnik2004]

If you don't read papersource, you may not have read that we sold our condo in one country and bought a house in another. All in about four days. The papersource and I? We do not screw around.

If you don't read the New York Times magazine, you may not have read this article about Why TV Makes You Smarter. I have my doubts: if watching TV makes you smart, I ought to be like a Harvard PhD or something. But it's a neat article nonetheless.

If you don't read my Ro-Blog (aka robotnikblog), you may not have read my post about the above NYT article, and how Hill Street Blues nearly drove me insane once.

If you don't read The Globe and Mail, you may not have read my friend Sean's feature in this Saturday's "Focus" section on skateboarding for grownups. At least I think the piece is about skateboarding for grownups. I haven't read it myself; the online version is available to paid subscribers only. (If only we'd picked up the Globe on our way out of town Saturday. Maybe somebody in Canadia can save me a copy?) But still, it's very cool that Sean (aka sneech515) snagged another byline in Canada's newspaper of record. For those of you keeping score at home, this brings the balance of the universe, at least as far as the Globe's "Focus" section is concerned, to All That's Right in the World: 1, Leah McLaren: 517.

Comments

[papersource.livejournal.com]

We haven't actually sold our condo. We haven't even signed the p & s yet. Not time to count chickens yet!

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Good point. Touch wood, hope I didn't jinx anything, stamped it, double locked it, no black magics.

Still, I think its fair to say the chickens are lining up expectantly.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

Bochco-style soap-operatic TV structures may make viewers smart, but they overwhelmingly seem to make writers stupid and lazy, and scripts padded (Oh no! A panther is attacking Jack's daughter!) and incestuous. Eighteen-leven plot lines later, you wind up feeling as bloated yet unsated by the season as after an afternoon of mediocre dim sum.

Bitch all you want about Starsky and Hutch, but their writers had to craft something that at least sounded interesting and resembled an actual story to fill 45 minutes; compare any episode from the second season of the increasingly aptly-named Deadwood.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually seen enough of Starsky & Hutch or Deadwood to comment specifically on those particular pieces of fine art.

Padding is obviously a part of the soap opera / serial structure. There are many chapters of Dickens where nothing happens too. I think I'd still take a serial where not very much happens in some (non-sweeps) episodes over a "traditional" show where the formula of the show forbids anything lasting from happening, ever. As I say, I haven't actually seen much Hutch, but I wonder if you aren't romanticizing the past a little? The 70s and 80s cop/action shows I do remember are, from today's p.o.v., as slow as molasses and as banal as a board to the head. If it wasn't for how-do-I-get-this-car-out-of-second-gear car chases in underground parking garages, they'd barely fill a half hour, let alone 45 minutes.

The panther v. Jack's daughter was the very first episode of 24 I saw. Seeing it out of context like that it actually had a crazed zen bliss to it, like the Perils of Pauline. But that feeling passed pretty quickly.