Dear “The Office”,
Remember at the end of last season when Michael stuck it to David Wallace and got his entire Michael Scott Paper Co. team rehired? What a great moment. Finally, some growth.
This year, not so much. I root for him every week but I need a little more. Please? Please. Just a little reason to hope? He had some good moments of self-awareness with Kathy Bates. But “Date Mike” … I really had to look away.
I finally saw this week’s LOST.
Nestor Carbonell LIT IT UP for an hour. Get this man some serious movie work. He was amazing. Wow.
As for what the freak is going on with the show, I don’t know. Spoilers below.
I’d been thinking since the first episode of this season that it was all actually a Paradise Lost scenario, with Smokey being Satan and wanting to go home (to Heaven). That might still make sense but it’s hard to fit Jacob into the cosmology. He’s not God, though his attitudes (“why should I have to step in?”) seem like stock theodicy tropes. And what of the fact that he brings people to the Island to basically prove things to Smokey? Very Jobish.
Tom Spanbauer calls cliched words and imagery received text. I know this because of a great essay Chuck Palahniuk wrote about Amy Hempel and minimalism. I try to by hyperaware of received text in my work and when I’m reading manuscripts in workshop.
Case in point: On a recent walk, when my dog moved to use a fire hydrant in typical cartoon fashion, I actually said to myself, “Come on, boy, you’re better than that.”
(Yeah, I’m in an MFA program).
March 23, 2010
I know I’m late on this, but I’ve been wanting to reiterate that what Michael Giacchino said at the Oscars (and how he said it) was really important:
Thank you, guys. When I was… I was nine and I asked my dad, “Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8 millimeter camera that was in your drawer?” And he goes, “Sure, take it.” And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, “What you’re doing is a waste of time.” Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you’re doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was OK to do that. I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system so if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It’s not a waste of time. Do it. OK? Thank you. Thank you.
Same for Mo’Nique: “sometimes you have to forgo doing what is popular in order to do what’s right.”
I was reminded of both of these quotes by this post.
March 23, 2010
One of my photographs is up at Dogzplot today. It’s from the Moravian Cemetery in Bethlehem. Also up today is a great flash piece by Kyle Minor, a great writer I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with.
At the end of the last decade (this post is from 2010), we were curating so much loss. Mostly of physical artifact. I can’t find the quote below, but if memory serves, it was from a page at ThinkGeek selling USB drives.
“Mixtapes are a lost art in a dead medium.
The Mixtape is a fine art that is threatened by the loss of the medium. Two channel analog magnetic tape is disappearing in favor of MP3 files. A mixtape is a snapshot of your musical and social tastes during the brief period in which you created it. That summer in 1992, maybe your mixtape was full of Stone Temple Pilots, Morrissey, Toad The Wet Sprocket, The Cure, and audio-clips from Blade Runner. You gave that tape to your girlfriend. She dumped you, but not because of that mixtape. That was awesome!“
Check. this. out.
I’m glad I’m old enough to have done this on real magnetic tape once upon a time. Remember taping things from the radio? The best. A few months ago I found a tape I made of a local radio station circa 1994. Almost too beautiful to handle.
March 20, 2010
It’s official. Happy Spring! Don’t forget your free Rita’s Water Ice.
I live down the street from an Irish bar. This weekend is the St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl in my neighborhood. It’s 74 degrees here as I write this, and I can hear “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” being bagpiped live outside the bar. Hard to believe that a month ago we were digging out from two huge snow storms. Yesterday my son pulled his sled down from the porch, set it on the ground, sat in it and said “it’s going to snow.” “Not for a while,” we said. So we decided to sled in the grass. It was great.
Chris Cocca 