Glass Shallot by Adam Baer

Garry Marshall on Hollywood (RIP)

The late Garry Marshall--creator of "Happy Days" and "Laverne & Shirley," among many other pop-culture entertainments--once told me a few funny stories for a Rolling Stone article about studio executives who give writers notes on their work. This comes from our taped conversation:

"The Odd Couple, remember the Odd Couple? Well, they told me, we need two stars. Big stars. Dean Martin and Mickey Rooney. My partner and I said, "We don't like that, we don't want to do it." They said, "Alright: Who do you want?" I said, "Jack Klugman." They said: "Who?" I said, "Jack Klugman, he did a show, 'Gypsy,' in New York." "We'll check him out, we'll check him out," they said. Then they come back: "Are you crazy? He can't do a funny show--he won an Emmy for 'The Defenders!'" "So that means he's not funny," I asked? "No, not exactly," they said. I said, "Please look at this tape, I'll get you a tape--look at him, he can be funny; he did a 'Twilight Zone,' he was funny. They said, "OK." Then they looked at him, and this was Paramount: "We looked at him and we don't like his mustache." I says, "What? He has no mustache." "Yeah, we looked at him," they said. And so then I find out who they looked at. They looked at Jack Kruschen. Who was that? 

Then one day, and this was during Vietnam, they told me that the perfect show to do would be about recruiting troops on 42nd street in New York City. An Army, Navy, and an Air Force guy. "It'll be funny," they said. So of course, I wrote a pilot. This is what we did in middle of the Vietnam War. People are burning their draft cards, and we're writing a show called "The Recruiters?!"

 

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Go to Music School -- Just Go to a Better One

A few days ago, an op-ed columnist in the New York Times wrote that he didn't think his kid should transfer into a music school. Today, Fred Bronstein, dean of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, responded in the Times. It's a strong, smart statement that takes the piece's headline literally, emphasizing "training" musicians "attuned to their communities" who should be "effective communicators, educators, entrepreneurs, audience development experts and citizen-artists." But there's more to be said on that issue.

I'm a former Peabody student, and I say that if you have the talent and determination, you should go to music school. It's one of the best things that I ever did with my life. It filled my soul and trained my brain to accomplish many other things, including serious writing projects. I'm a big believer in the humanities, and as a musician from a family of musicians, I wanted the immersion in music that they had enjoyed beyond the pre-college music conservatory. But I simultaneously attended Johns Hopkins' separate Arts & Sciences undergraduate program, and I graduated in 2000, a bad time to go to music school. Back then, the older classically oriented ones like mine (Peabody is the country's first conservatory), weren't designed yet to teach students what they really needed to know as the Internet was growing. They were experimenting. But schools that emphasized popular genres like the Berklee College of Music were leaps and bounds ahead, especially with respect to getting students fluent with digital and business.

The issue now isn't really whether or not you should go to music school. It's how strong is the school you want to attend? How well will it train you to be a musician-plus today? Sure, you can go to music school, study an instrument, composing, history, and theory--and you can learn the practical stuff on your own. But you really ought to ensure that you have your sights set on the realities of our time and that the music school you choose really does teach all of its students (maybe even as a "core") the following: business (especially entrepreneurship but also management, marketing, arts administration, contract negotiation, and financial skills); technology (app development, coding, UX, digital production for all genres [hip-hop, pop, songwriting, etc.], recording, video, engineering, music and sound editing for media/entertainment); music education; writing; arts advocacy; film/media composing; and IP/copyright law, as well as perhaps public health (!).

I have long appreciated Columbia University's "core curriculum." Music schools have always had a version of their own, consisting of theory, ear-training, lessons, etc. But now they need new ones full of required courses and skills assessments--it's not just about supplementing music classes with languages and the humanities or intros to the good things that Bronstein mentions (Peabody is lucky to have him). Courses in these subjects need to be authoritative and leave students with strong skills. They need to be practical and effective. I'm asking for a lot, but that's what the world asks of you as a musician, or as any kind of creative professional. So, schools: Please partner with media companies, music publishers, tech startups, small businesses, independent artists, more community schools. Add incentives. Stress the requirements beyond music skills. Stress that these are music skills.

I studied the violin at Peabody while attending Hopkins, but I live in Hollywood now, consult on music and work as a writer, journalist, and editorial content strategist. My first job out of college was at NPR; they hired me to be a cultural producer with a specialty in digital, but getting that gig was a bit of blind luck (although I knew how to code), based mostly on the fact that I'd published music criticism in the Washington Post. I would have benefitted so much from even a few of the aforementioned extra classes. Recording was available at my school, but it was a highly specialized degree program track. So, too, music education. These things were not stressed as necessary for everyone. But they were, and they are critically necessary now. A student at a great music school shouldn't have to learn Logic in an Apple Store.

What's great, though, is that Peabody is now poised to do this as an entity owned by Johns Hopkins University, and Bronstein says he's devoted to the cause. But it should be reiterated that I graduated from college 15 years ago, and Peabody was not moving on these things nearly quickly enough, even though it had been owned by Hopkins for a while. I have great hope for future music students, but also some words of advice: Double-degree program with a university. Or, even better, something new and singular that blends two types of schools like Hopkins and Peabody more seamlessly. That's what I tried to do with my program, and eventually I only took one degree (my Arts & Sciences B.A.). The Music School as a template for higher education needs to evolve more quickly and comprehensively for the sake of all musicians as well as those who will move into other fields while using their music skills. The great music that we love will be thankful.-- Adam Baer

 

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Jenji Kohan Has a Husband, His Name is Christopher Noxon, and We Spoke About his Stellar Novel

The congenial Christopher Noxon knows what it means to be a Plus One (something about weed, the color orange, and a talented woman called Jenji). Anyway, we talked about this subject and Chris' new novel Plus One for The Believer. You can buy the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Plus-One-Christopher-Nox…/…/1938849426 But you can read our interview by clicking here.

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Gandolfini, Healing, Continuance

"The morning of the day I got sick I'd been thinking... it's good to be in something from the ground floor..."

I first learned about The Sopranos at NPR's old headquarters. I was new to my job, to any office job, and people in the building were talking about the show, apparently passing around VHS tapes. I asked to be put into the queue. Two people were ahead of me. When at last I received the tapes I found myself fall ill, spend four weeks at home with a high fever. This was the first time that James Gandolfini came into my life. Every day, I had something to do while I rested, healed, that I loved. Books sat unopened, I shared the show (show? superfilm?) with my visiting father. Eventually, I got better, returned the tapes, asked for more, signed back up for HBO. Now, when I look at The Sopranos scripts -- and a better version of this comment came originally from an astute friend, Will Berson, in conversations we would have about the show -- I see that despite the show's great writing (a show about millenial America, about watching, about the now, about entropy), it was the acting that made it, especially in its early seasons when it was lighter. That acting was lead by Gandolfini, in practicality and in purity of spirit, and today, I return to watching Sopranos episodes, often just for the enveloping performances, for Gandolfini's life-affirming,selfless devotion to his art. The watching will go on.--Adam Baer, www.adambaer.com

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) on Her Funniest "Note" [Exclusive, R-rated]

A few years ago, Rolling Stone kindly published a piece of mine about the funniest "studio notes" actors, writers, directors, and comedians have received from Hollywood producers and network execs. It was intended to be an oral history about receiving chortle-worthy criticism, a way to use these "notes" to tell some of comedy's best secret stories, and I hope we accomplished that goal, to some degree. (Note: the headline was not my first choice, but I am a team player, and I had a lot of fun working on the piece and eventual pride seeing it in RS.)

It was a dream assignment: I interviewed a score of hilarious celebs, producers and directors--from Mel Brooks and Garry Shandling to younger talents like David Wain ("Wet Hot American Summer"), Paul Scheer ("The League"), and Nick Stoller ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "The Five Year Engagement").

Everyone cracked me up, and the piece generated serious interest from one of the world's biggest book publishers. So I took some of the quotes from my many funny interviews that Rolling Stone had not picked for inclusion (page-space is limited at magazines), and my agent and I went out with a book proposal about how this could be a hilarious narrative project, especially given my access to so many people in the entertainment industry. Eventually, and ironically, the senior publishing exec didn't think the book would make money (I still disagree), and the project, which could now be a brilliant multimedia thing with video, great for iPads, was tabled.*

Alas, one of the many funny things Rolling Stone could not include--sadly rendering my collection of interview subjects 100% male--was my unforgettable, if short, interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars tonight in HBO's new series "Veep." I share this gem with you now. Word, for word, and I have this on tape, this is what one of the funniest actresses in comedy told me, on the record. Addendum: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a lovely, generous woman, with guts of steel, and I don't doubt she will continue to be a hit with audiences everywhere -- and to reiterate, I would not have posted this if she had not given me the quote on the record.

FUNNIEST STUDIO NOTE: JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS

"I have only one story that comes to mind, and I leave out names because that's a better idea.

But when I was very young and had just started on “SNL”--I believe I was 20--I did a sketch in which I played John DeLorean's wife...

In that sketch, my hair was blown out straight -- because her hair is straight.

So, we did the show, and the following day, I was called into one of our producers' offices (as a side note, I should say that I have naturally curly hair), and he said to me, “Julia, I got a call from a bunch of NBC executives after last night’s show, and they said that after seeing your hair straight, they all wanna fuck you.”

This was apparently his way of trying to entice me into straightening my hair for the rest of season.

Needless to say: I was young and naïve, but I was so shocked that anyone would say anything like that, I just burst out laughing in a hysterical way. I didn't know what else to do.

Years later, when "Seinfeld" was becoming somewhat of a hit, I ran into the same producer at NBC again.

And he said to me, “Hey, Julia, I see they're letting you do your hair the way you want now."

That's apparently all he took away from my “Seinfeld” contribution.

The irony of it was that not only did I make my hair curly on "Seinfeld," which may have been a huge mistake now that I think about it, but I enhanced the curl and made it HUGE!

I wonder if that hair wasn't some kind of reaction.

I was saying: 'Not only is this hair going to be curly, it's going to be crazy curly. Take that, motherfucker!!'"

--as told to Adam Baer

 

*Tabled in this case means I stopped pursuing it. I'm open to pursuing it again, though, especially with a new class of today's funniest people.

Why the Oscars Need a "Best Soundtrack" Category

Today I have a piece in The Atlantic in which I persuade the Academy Awards to create a "Best Soundtrack" category that would honor the artistic work of insightful music supervisors, who should be given the same awards as art directors and other creative film staffers. There wasn't much room to get into a large discussion of the best soundtracks ever created much less those of this year. But as I wrote, the "art is in the curating of the mix," and in that spirit, I offer you up the one-song but internally eclectic soundtrack to my life. OK, seriously: that song and this one.

UPDATE: A reader commented on the piece with an intelligent response. The comment and my reply are below. 

• A "Best Soundtrack" category would be interesting... although it would immediately create confusion among viewers with the "Best Original Score" category, would it not?

• Adam Baer

  It could, and I'm a big supporter of composers. One idea, then, is to create two categories for music: "Best Soundtrack" and "Best Original Music." That way scores can continue to be awarded individually, but the rare individual song could be singled out as well. Is it easier to write a song than a score? That's not really the issue, especially when many of today's scores are bits and pieces of incidental music cues. This would allow us a chance to still award composers for their important work (something important to me) and offer an award for a full soundtrack, including a score and playlist of pre-written/recorded songs.--Adam Baer

 

Update #2: The other strategy they could employ is two music categories: Best Music Direction (like art direction, which would include soundtrack), and Best Original Music. --Adam Baer 

Did Facebook Delete A Writer's Attempt to Use Timeline as a Narrative Tool?

Today I posted "content" in an attempt to use Facebook Timeline in a humorous, narrative way; I was kidding a little, but I thought it could be fun to really use the software to create a comedic, serialized micro-narrative made of short status updates. The post was commented on by a couple of friends, and then removed by someone other than me. I then discussed this in another status update with those same friends. That was then promptly removed by someone other than me. I then reposted the content twice, and now I do not see any of this on my page. If Facebook would like people to care about its IPO -- and that's a foregone conclusion, they do, because billions of dollars are concerned, but let's talk about regular people -- they should not delete writers' attempts to use their tools to create and engage with an audience, in jest or more serious ways. The aforementioned content (copied below) is far from genius and merely average, but I posted it here, which is less "buggy" a virtual "place" and likely watched by fewer programmers who police and react to user content. Perhaps this was all just FB software problems...but if so, who can trust FB with content you do not backup elsewhere. I mean, what if this stuff was actually good?

Here is the attempt at humor I posted, related to the ABC Show Revenge. Do you find it inappropriate?

"When I was 10, a high-school senior in my Monte Cristo-like neighborhood was hired to hang out with and shoot hoops with me before my parents returned home from work. One day, the kind young man suggested I find someone to buy me a tape of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” So, I did, and the next time he appeared, he “borrowed” it, never to return or answer our many calls again. Now, as a rational adult, I plan to use Facebook Timeline, narratively, to track down this man for a final confrontation. Would any of you care to follow this meaningful adventure? I shall call it “My Facebook ‘Revenge’ / Season One: Born to Run.”

I shall move slowly, follow clues, keep my emotions at bay, and friend anyone close to this man and his especially heinous crime, crossing each one off my list one by one. It will be sweet to one day recover this low quality recording, if it still exists, uncompressed and possibly warped. But the ultimate prize will be hearing this man sing under duress the lyrics: “The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive / Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide.”

 

AFTERNOON UPDATE: Facebook was briefly down this morning, and I wouldn't want to think they'd target one person, so it's quite possible that's what happened. Still, the "dangerous"  keywords used in my posts could have triggered a moderator or bot to remove them at different times (people observed their staggered removal individually), and the critique and untraditional use of Timeline the day after FB's IPO announcement is definitely something they might try to quash. 

The important issue remains: Can we trust FB to hold our original life-content as Timeline promises? I'd use a few backups, and make sure you already own the rights to anything you publish anywhere.

Leasing Los Angeles

The piece in text form, here.--Adam Baer

Uncurbed Enthusiasm

Usher in this new Jewish year (and this is an offer  open to atheist shunners of organized religion, believe me!) with this new Salon profile of former "Curb Your Enthusiasm" director Robert B. Weide. The former documentarian sees his feature directorial debut this week, but, for "Curb" fans, his Web site, duckprods.com, offers some facts about the show you want to know.  (Incidentally, Weide won one of his Emmy awards for one of our favorite "Curb" episodes, "Crazee Eyes Killah" [related pic above]).

A New Definition of Eco-Conscious

There was a time when Umberto Eco meant the world to me. I was a young college student, flooded with the "brilliance" of the postmodernists, and eager to lap it up. But I always found it sort of funny, all this meta-thinking about meta-thinking, all these linguistic symbolisms and academizing of pop culture. I even remember a friend and I mocking the titles of our new university classes: "Towards realizing deconstructionist comprehensions of the French fry's representation in popular culture as a symbol of both deliciousness and death." '"The Popular Semiotics of "Is": "To be" in our political theater." You get the idea.

At any rate, Umberto Eco was often our voice of reason. He took the postmodern movement somewhere sensible. He made us laugh, he laughed at himself, told great tales, and he qualified what soon became a rampant nonsense-parade.

So I wanted to like his new book: "Turning Back the Clock: Hot wars and Media Populism." That's why I reviewed it in today's S.F. Chronicle Book Review. But things didn't go exactly as planned.

Have a read:  "Eco takes critical look at war, Mel Gibson in 'Turning Back'," San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 2007

"A Big Bowl of Right"

Before it got crazy-hot in Hollywood, I had a chance to enjoy some deli with "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" gracious Jeff Garlin, whose first writing-directing effort "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With" arrives in theaters and on IFC very soon. Here's the story in today's NY Sun (please disregard a rude headline that tries to be cute, courtesy of someone other than the humble author), and have a look below the link for some transcript extras. "Curb" fans, your fix:

A Breakfast with Jeff Garlin: http://www.nysun.com/article/61673

------------------------------------------------------------

Jeff Garlin interview extras:
On watching his film in Hollywood's lame little screening rooms: “No, I actually prefer it to when someone’s seeing it on a DVD because you want everyone to see your movie on a big screen.  My movie seems to play better on a bigger screen than it does on DVD, which concerns me given the [IFC] “on demand” aspect of it.  But for this kind of movie, that on-demand aspect just gives more people the opportunity to see it.  So I don’t dispute it and certainly with a small movie, I’d do it again.”

AB:    You're funny. Are people usually nervous around you?
JG:    For the most part, no.  But, sometimes they are, which I find strange. Because I don’t think I’m shit.
AB:    Is it hard to direct, write, and produce at once?
JG:    None of it’s hard.  I hate to say that.  But the hard part of acting is learning lines.  Hard part of directing is putting in the preparation.  Hard part of being a comedian is... I don’t what’s hard about that.  It’s hard for other people who don’t have the skills that I have.
AB:    What are the skills that you have?
JG:    I’m funny!  Really, the hard part of show business is the business part.  That’s what I get paid for.  I don’t get paid to act or direct a movie.  I get paid to deal with the [nice people!] when it comes to negotiating a contract, or dealing with people who don’t have a creative point of view.  That’s what I get paid for. But HBO is a utopia.  HBO is different than other places.
AB:    What about getting this movie [“I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With”] made?
JG:    I banged my head against the wall to get ahead, and I still can’t believe it’s actually coming out, or that it was even made.
AB:    It’s funny, I like Sarah Silverman, but I never put you and her together in the same group of colleagues.
JG:    I don’t hang out with her much anymore.  I don’t think she hangs out with anybody, except for Jimmy Kimmel and whoever she’s working with.  She works hard.  I wrote the part for her.  I’ve been friends with her since she was 19. 
AB:    What was she like then?
JG:    She was this cute little girl.  The Boston Comedy Club in New York, I remember meeting her there, and she was very sweet.  We’ve been friends ever since. 
AB:    What do you think about her whole sex-symbol thing?
JG:    Well, she’s a beautiful girl and she’s got a high-level of sexuality.  Good for her.
AB:    She reminds me of girls I went to high school with on Long Island, but those girls also made me laugh.  Anyway, improv people are really kind of taking over now.  It requires more interior thinking, no?
JG:    Well, the thing about improvisation is that you can’t teach somebody how to be funny, but you can teach them how to improvise.  I’m not saying everyone can do it, but you can be taught to do it.  You can be taught how to act.  Plenty of people have never acted before, and people find jobs.  But you can’t teach someone how to be funny.  You can look at it this way: there are great violinists.  But you can teach lots of people to play the violin.  I think improv falls under the same guise.  I really do.  But comedy, you’re born funny or you’re not.   You’re born with greatness on the violin, or you’re not.
AB:    How would you teach improv? Do you teach?
JG:    There are basic rules, and if you follow the rules, you’re okay. Every once in a while, I’ll do a workshop for free.  I wouldn’t charge anybody for my knowledge.
AB:    What’s with the puddin’?  My father's a professor of rice pudding, but you’re not quite his age.
JG:    I love rice puddin’.  But, you know what, when I was a little kid all the way through my early 20’s, I didn’t like it. You find it later on.
AB:    Where do you find it?
JG:    At your local grocer!  You know who makes a good one?  Kozy Shack.  Kozy Shack pudding is tremendous.

Link: Red Carpet "Cheese" Interviews

Why Glass Shallot?

Because we are descended from connoisseurs of Kozy Shack.

god only knows how big love got away with it. oh yeah: money.

It's not like this is the first time this has happened. Let's just get that out of the way. But I am about to make an argument--one that some people may be tired of--that certain musical hits--especially works important to the course of music history--should be sacred. That is, you shouldn't be able to easily buy the rights to certain songs and then use them as the theme to your middling HBO dramedy, for instance, even if the composer of the song is OK with it and wants the money. The public should get to weigh in. Or at least take the producers of said show to task for such behavior if it's a blatantly atrocious move.

Here's my jumping off point: Now that the current season is about to end, I think it's high time to rake over the coals executive producer Tom Hanks and his use of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" as the theme song to the show "Big Love."

"God Only Knows" doesn't just mean a lot to music history--it's arguably the Beach Boys's most inventive but popular composition, save from a few other "Pet Sounds" tracks. And it just so happens to mean a lot to me and my fiance. (There; we said it. We're cheeseballs who also love harmonic analysis. Got it?) Anyway, "God Only Knows" is a song that we have (privately) made ours for personal reasons. (Though, God isn't part of those reasons; let me say that, too.) This may all sound lame, but that's the power of pop music, and that's why songwriters create tunes like this. The goal is to create something universally personal.

But by attaching a song like this to a manipulative soap opera like "Big Love"--to the entirety of the multi-season series, whose titles begin with a bizarrely stupid scene showing a polygamist and his sister wives skating on thin ice--the producers of the show have attached fictional scenes and pictures and characters and themes to this song. When we hear "God Only Knows" now, it's hard for watchers of the show to separate it from "Big Love." It's just too famous and so-called "absolute" a song for it to be victimized by such semantic manipulation. And yet no one pipes up.

Look: We (fans) don't own the song any more than "Big Love" does--in fact, we own it less because "Big Love" likely paid Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys a princely sum to use the music.  I know that. But we also don't broadcast to the world images of our lives--or worse, our lame narratives--with "God Only Knows" in the background. We don't rape the song of its absolute brilliance--of its ability to mean something different to different people--and render it a semiotic aid for one particular narrative that needs a lot of help.

If "God Only Knows" means something to us, the meaning is private. But "Big Love" has made it a public statement--an anthem that some people may now attach to religious fanatacism, polygamy, silly dramedys, Bill Paxton, Chloe Sevigny, Utah, ice-skating, etc. (I've just begun to associate it with mediocre TV, and that's a lot worse than all of the above.)

Frankly, I don't mind "Big Love." I think it's a middling show--watchable but not terrible.
But I also think that the producers should be publicly reprimanded for using a popular and meaningful and important song like this to draw in an audience. "The Sopranos" didn't need to abuse music this way--David Chase used an obscure  song as his series theme; his show stood on its own two feet. So, too, David Milch for John from Cincinnati; though his show was terribly confusing and at times unwatchable, the Joe Strummer-song "Johnny Appleseed" was the best part and never had the ability to help it along.

Not only are there lots of songs to be used for TV that might never win popularity without a creative music supervisor's suggestion; there are great composers around to write original music for such shows.

The egregious kicker? "Big Love" even has the gall to keep innovator David Byrne on as the show's fulltime composer but the producers don't use his music for its theme. It's not just cheap but sad. The decision trivializes a song that means everything to many music lovers and pop historians. That's how nervous the producers were about finding an audience and making money. All I can wonder is: What's next? An edgy, button-pushing dramedy about yoga teachers in LA who use their Los Feliz studio as a front for a terrorist cell introduced every week by John Lennon's "Instant Karma?"

Why Glass Shallot?

Because we've now opened the music supervision division of the company, and can actually suggest songs that aren't on everyone's favorite mixtape.

sopranos out of tune with real therapy

I adore the Sopranos--perhaps more than the average fanatic--even if this season has been fairly disappointing between episodes two and a few weeks ago. For that reason, though, it's been very hard for me to watch the writers and producers make a mockery of therapy all these years. From a family connected to the profession, I have to say that not only has Dr. Melfi been a poor therapist--which is fine and interesting to show, though I'm not sure that creator David Chase saw her that way from day one. She, and others in the profession on the show, also cross all kinds of important lines that real therapists wouldn't cross. Such as: how she socializes with her therapist, Elliot Kupferberg, played by Peter Bogdanovich. Of course, the "new" research that he cites this season--that sociopaths actually don't benefit from therapy, and may use it to enable and rationalize their behaviors--is real even if it's 30 years old. But last's night's contention that "the new thing" is "psychodynamic" therapy really got therapists angry all over the country. Psychodynamic therapy, of course, evolved from Freud and is the sort of purist, old-school talking-cure therapy that's losing popularity on its own as eclectic integration of the form along with cognitive behavioral therapy and other forms grow across the country (though the psychodynamics still have a stronghold in New York; see the CUNY clinical psych graduate program). The point, however, remains that psychodynamic therapy is what Melfi has been using on Tony all this time (and that Tony is lucky to have found a true M.D. psychiatrist that actually doesn't just prescribe pills but speaks with her clients in an era when many private practice psychiatrists mainly do "medication management" so they can bill for five patients an hour and leave the talking to psychologists). Why Chase couldn't quite get this stuff right is beyond me  (how about suggesting groundbreaking schema therapy for sociopathy--a way to change people with persistent personality disorders? Or perhaps Chase is implying that Melfi just decided to lie and insult Tony's intelligence for her own private victory over the sociopathic hulk, though I doubt he was going that deep). For this and other reasons--I loved Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas, but has she turned in more than a few passable performances since Sopranos season one?--I am happy to see Dr. Melfi exit.  Again, there's a lot of Sopranos love here, but this therapeutic and medical relationship wasn't exactly the highlight of the series that changed television, and more fans should recognize that.

three kings: elvis + henry viii = who?

Hollywood must think much of Jonathan Rhys-Myers. He's oh-so-naturally portrayed two virtuous ,youthful versions of two of the most clear-headed men in history. And he's just 29. Young enough still to play a cackling, coke-headed George W. Bush in the forthcoming HBO original family crime drama "Oily Shrubs?" A natural progression like this simply cannot be stopped.

upright citizen regresses further

After having seen numerous shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade theaters in both NY and LA, I have to say, it's pretty sad knowing that Amy Poehler, one of the founders, is so far along in her career, and that the other three guys, who can be funny, aren't. One of the things that strikes you when you first see a UCB long-form improv show--especially a free one--is how many very young college kids come out for it. And how well, these aging middle agers--the three guys who founded the troupe with Amy--play to them (Amy is always somewhere else, though I have caught her a number of times, and she's delivered the goods, ratcheting up a performance as long as coked up Seth Myers isn't a guest, or worse, the unfunny Horacio Sanz). Now, from Joystiq, however, is a video from the chief UCB man-child Matt Besser, doing shtick on gamers. I'm not offended. I'm not a gamer. But Besser, man, come on: You don't have to keep skewing young to get a laugh. As the sharpest tool in the UCB box, it should be evident that hitting the right comedic note by now is no longer just indulging the USC freshmen. Hell, look at Conan. He's found a way to stay college-funny but age, brilliantly. For now, that is.

[via Joystiq]

note to the food network

Iron Chef America was kind of fun at the beginning, but how about kicking things up a notch and actually, you know, filming it the way it's supposedly filmed: With a guest chef randomly picking an Iron Chef to challenge, with both chefs learning of their secret ingredient one minute later, and with having to create dishes on the spot without prior knowledge of the so-called secret ingredient and a cast of sous chefs. Seriously, I think a few of the chefs--say, Mario Batali and Morimoto--could do it. And then the show would actually be exciting. Alas, this is reality TV.

You've got garlic in your soul

That's my favorite line from the Grinch's swanswong, heard again lovingly on ABC last night (what else would you expect from a shallot-monger?). Anyway, thank you for doing something fun, nourishing, and actually not terrible for once, network television. I almost couldn't believe I wasn't watching cable.

when eddie was

After wife swapping, how could exchanging races not shock our numbed American senses as the next thoroughly original and "Extreme" reality TV challenge? At least that's what F/X is striving to have us believe - the fact that Ice Cube's new show is pioneering. Guess he's betting on the fact that we won't remember White Like Me. Or that Eddie Murphy won't mind him riding his coattails to some sweet cable development deal blingo.

favorite tv theme song meme

Ken Levine got in on the TV theme song meme, and I must add my two cents, given that I come from the younger generation and that I'm not, I hope, a moron. My one addition is that I'm going to include TV theme music, which sometimes isn't a song but just absolute instrumental sound. (Keep in mind, this isn't exclusively TV score music, so the sounds from "Lost" won't be on this list.)

Alas, my 10 picks for TV music openers:

1. Magnum, P.I.
2. The Sopranos
3. Curb Your Enthusiasm (not available online, but this bad ringtone is funny)
4. Diff'rent Strokes
5. Knight Rider
6. Nip/Tuck
7. Love Boat
8. Bewitched
9. Baretta
10. The Jeffersons

Honorable Mention: Taxi, Welcome Back Kotter, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, Adam-12 (How could I resist?), CHiPs

critical condition

So I made the mistake of landing on the Critics' Choice Awards last night, after more than a week of non-blogging (and hence not giving much attention to the side of my brain that critiques stuff). Yet after landing on the frighteningly intimate show--like the Globes, it had some of the biggest stars sitting close together at cocktail tables--I couldn't quite change the channel. It was sort of fascinating to watch the stars take everything so nonchalantly. To be sure, it's exciting to be given an award from the people who critique your work all year. But let we forget, Anthony Lane, J. Hoberman, and Andrew Sarris aren't exactly the reviewers doling out the prizes. The Critics' Choice Awards, as one might have surmised by morning show lightweight Joel Siegel enjoying the honor of presenting the Best Picture award, is governed by the Broadcast Film Critics Association. Which means, essentially, that Joel Siegel was likely the most adept critical mind on the panel, as anyone who has ever watched a review of a movie on their local TV news will agree. It was pretty funny to watch, in fact: One could sense Mr. Siegel's awareness that everyone really knows he's a mental lightweight--with Spielberg, Clooney, Ang Lee, Paul Haggis, and Jim Mangold in the room, it was finally the star's chance to feel intellectually superior. And as each accepted his or her award, it was as if he or she was acting excited--if not terribly casual. Clooney's speech--he received some sort of Freedom Award for the important work he's contributed over the last year--was strikingly articulate, humble, and off-the-cuff (and he's the son of a newsman). Of course, as Mssr. Siegel reminded his audience, five of the past six winners of the Critics' Choice award for best picture have won the Best Picture Oscar. (Does that mean the Academy watches their local news reports too much?) Still, it was hard to escape sensations that the stars knew the broadcast critics only matter insofar as they promote ticket sales. "I love critics!" exclaimed Reese Witherspoon, who then went on to qualify her statement saying that that's at least how she felt this year--well, one half of this year. I just wish the camerapeople would have cut-away from the stage more. It would have been interesting to see Clooney and Spielberg chatting about an  NYT Op-Ed one of them was reading on his smartphone. Next year, how about the real critics get together to dole out awards? Then we might get to see how Hollywood creatives feel about the critical voices that matter.

pure entertainment

TVland.com is offering full episodes of David Steinberg's new comedian talk show, "Sit Down Comedy." And you can listen to the shows as podcasts as well. My favorite guest: Larry David.  But of course.

how about some holiday love for wikipedia?

A Festivus for the rest of us.

so jewtastic

So, surprise, Bar Mitzvah Disco fans: Jews are "hip," as well as "creative, neurotic and brainy." And oh yeah, they play heavy metal, and Rrrap. Or so the latest VH1 list show would have it. Remember that one week, many years ago, when "I Love the '80s" was actually comedic? Remember when it was so, so shameful to be a Jew that everyone thought all the studio heads and top writers were "goyim"? Get the lowdown on VH1's most tired attempt at pop cultural classification yet from THR's Andrew Wallenstein. And Happy Hanukkah.

product invasion

Um, I support the reality writers who are leveraging for Guild membership, but since when wasn't reality TV--or anything fictional, for that matter--a product placement nightmare? Ask Subservient Donald.

Snack Attack

I just saw SNL's Chris Parnell a few days ago where I get my cupcakes. I cannot tell you how close I was to engaging him in something just like this.

[via Gawker]

Unabomber Chic

A Radar Magazine Q&A with Zach Galifianakis, a true Comedian of Comedy. I wish I could have posted the whole transcript (maybe later). Until then, I quote Nicholas Cage on the oh-so-Bergmanesque Hollywood action director John Woo: "He makes me feel free." Text follows after the jump.

interviewsonic

So I just had the distinct pleasure of interviewing comedian Zach Galifianakis, who you may know from VH1's expectedly cancelled "Late World with Zach" (expectedly because it was, you know, funny) or from many Conan appearances. Or from the Dogma-annihilating high-art show/film "The Comedians of Comedy." Stay tuned for the officially published text. In the meantime, though, let me tell you something most people don't know about Zach. He doesn't just tickle the ivories, he sings (visit this page and click on the image to the left of the "Week 1" text) .

thankstruthingly fanned up the wazoo

My new favorite TV show already has an amazingly comprehensive blog-cum-fansite. Revel.

i can't get this brilliant tv theme song out of my head

Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds (sung here by the composer, not Pete Seeger)

BTW, the show is "Weeds," and unlike multicamera sitcoms on CBS that star '80s B movie actors, it's getting better with each episode  because someone, somewhere took a chance on something "risky."

W: he got game

I have always had a problem with the existence of speechwriters. I believe a president shouldn't be elected if he can't write the words the country needs to hear. Of course, speechwriters are more than just scribes -- they dramatize, they stage-manage, they seduce. But I think a president -- even one I like -- should know how to do that too. On his own. With a few notable exceptions, Hollywood, The New Yorker, and Knopf and don't pay writers who can't fictionalize, reason, and manipulate their way out of a rhetorical corner. Our taxes shouldn't either. David Kusnet's TNR piece on last night's Bush speech is therefore enlightening in a way others aren't. A former Clinton speechwriter, he puts (his sensible) politics aside for a moment to discuss how it was the order of Bush's rhetoric, as well as his dramatic setting and elegiac tone, that may have rendered last night's Katrina speech successful (I'm not sure I was swayed, but surprise: I'm not exactly the most middle-of-the-road voter). "By the time he arrived at the question of whether his administration should be held accountable for responding too late, with too little assistance and too much ineptitude," Kusnet writes, "Bush had gotten much of his audience nodding in agreement." It was classic seduction or "social dynamics" -- in other words, something terrifyingly similar to techniques used by Neil Strauss and other professional pick-up-artists in The Game to make otherwise uninterested women open to their social advances. The question is, did Michael Gerson, the "lyrical" Bush speechwriter and, in Kusnet's words, "evangelical Christian who now serves as a domestic policy adviser," study the Mystery Method? Or is he more into Speed Seduction? Or Real Social Dynamics? All I know is that if W. had found me sipping sweet fruity drinks at the Saddle Ranch and used some of that New Orleans drama to open up the heavily peacocked three-set I was hanging with, I, and all my air-tight liberal scruples, just might have been puddy in his soft, caring hands.

wrong war

The only thing worse about Fox's new strangely racist sitcom "The War At Home" is that it premiered on September 11. I, for one, almost tuned in just from reading its title in my TV Guide during one of those long FSN commercials. And it was almost funny enough to keep me, even though, natch, there wasn't anything in it about how to keep the right-wing dream alive. Good show, Rup!

[P.S. I realize the proliferation of anti-Fox posts this week. Stay tuned for some equal *glassShallot love dished to the others.]

letter from the sharapovasphere

From Maria Sharapova's revelatory blog, which should, I hasten to say, have been updated post-U.S. Open:

I also listen to my iPod all the time. I love music. The new Coldplay is sooo good. I can’t stop listening to that. Also, I’ve been into a lot of Dance and Club music. It keeps me moving. Sometimes I have to dance on the plane cause I can’t control myself.

What am I reading? Fashion magazines. Lots of them. All that I can get my hands on. After reading a good novel, it’s great to flip through magazines. As everyone knows I love fashion. I can’t get enough of it. It makes me want to go shopping. Doesn’t that sound fun?

Um, yes. But not as fun as reading her take on Tolstoy would be. That, not the new chicklit tome of the month, is what teenage Russian tennis stars built in Florida's Blonde Tennis Star Factory consider good novels, right? Let the gossip start here then. I'm breaking the NDA I signed with Sharapova Enterprises to leak to the world the luminary's newest media move: intellectual. Look for a 3,000 word Sharapova essay on Isaac Babel in an October issue of the The New York Review of Books. And remember, you didn't learn that here. Not unless you want a visit from Yuri and Slava.

at long last: the senior season o.c. political report!

It's been some time since we contributed an original O.C. political report, and even though it would please us at GS headquarters as much as the next Seth Cohen-wannabe to mock the oh-so-subtle "switch to Cingular" message present in the first ad campaign for Motorola's iTunes phone** (which conveniently ran during The O.C. premiere's first commercial break), we couldn't exactly let all of Josh Schwartz's hidden political messages go. So much has changed, after all, since Seth embodied the Bush presidency's feelings about people who make less than $100,000 a year by announcing to fresh-faced Summer: "I just can't be friends with you!"

simple minds

So everyone's saying Fox's new post-O.C. drama "Reunion" is the next best example of youth culture flashback drama on the flatscreen. That makes sense: Its first few minutes were a direct steal from John Hughes's "The Breakfast Club" complete with an overly expositional voice-over and the soothing sounds of Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me." Plagiarism: the new reality TV.

from put me on update to just put me

It seems the Chicago joke(ste)r behind putmeonupdate.com -- an online campaign to win a guest spot on SNL's news minute -- has retooled his project. What awaits is anyone's guess. The question, though, is why? Has he taken a page out of the book of Andy Milonakis and decided that simply videoblogging as simply and stupidly as possible will get him on TV? Seems to work, no?

divertissement: seu who?

Entertain yourself with the following pop-culture events, slated for arrival this week. They all come with one-line endorsements cooked up in the *glassShallot gefilte factory (unfortunately not in Portugese).

what you need to do is...

I accept that Dr. Phil exists, and thrives, in an America that can reelect the president it reelected (and don't tell me W.'s approval rating is down -- nothing's more American that electing someone who doesn't deserve it and then getting down on him when you refuse to take responsibility for your choice). And what's more Bush-like, after all, than suggesting a stick-it-out-and-learn-to-love-again-strategy to a loveless married couple of unadventurous scaredy cats that admits they only got together out of convenience in the first place. But what drives me batty about Dr. Phil--and I actually have stopped watching him to nurture my rage; I only ocassionally catch him now when a certain psych Ph.D. forces me to watch with her--is his son, Jay. Jay McGraw, author of books meant to mindfuck teens out of bullying, overeating, and just generally being "Bad," is the Youth Example: the oh-so-hip voice of reason that can speak to kids at their level about how to get through life in this terribly complicated, sense-bereft country that his parents have helped build, you know? The question is: What qualitative behavorial decision has Dr. Phil Jr. made now that we kids should follow? Why don't just get rich and famous off your dad's ability to manipulate red-state America. And don't just marry a Playboy playmate who's latest film appearance was a movie called "Nudity Required." Marry one of a set of identical triplet playmates who apparently don't mind "bad-touching" each other onscreen for money. Who says America's in trouble when you can write a book about child psychology without a Ph.D., ride the coattails of your celebrity father, and then buy yourself a shiny new girl-robot (with two anatomically  identical backups to replace her if the first one, um, breaks) with which to indulge all your American Dream fantasies? That, my friends--not a feeling of "warmth" or "wholeness" or "community"--is what stopping the bullyin' and bingin' will get ya. So get on the train. Stop telling Jimmy and Johnny they're fat and stupid. Get writin'. Move to L.A. And by all means, when Hef invites you to the grotto for a little R&R after a gratis "motivation talk," do NOT say no.

Bonus *glassShallot game: Which one of these new toys is Jay's? (Answer below)

(Answer: Does it matter?)

is *glassShallot a baxter?

The answer may be yes, I'm afraid. Confused? Unaware of the word "baxter"? I was too until recently, when I read my own Radar Magazine discussion about lame American presidents and why bad romantic comedies are good with Michael Showalter ("The State," "Wet Hot American Summer"). Find it on Radar's new Web site, or check the text after the jump.

is that gastritis or are you just happy to see me, killer?

According to the Futon Critic, "Criminal Minds," CBS's new Mandy Patinkin show--yes, I did, in fact just alert you to the fact that Mandy ("You Killed My Father") Patinkin will finally expand his repertoire from the touring company of AstraZeneca heartburn-pill TV ads--will, in fact, debut on September 22. And yes, that also means that Papa Can You Hear Me Patinkin will milk even further the increasingly evident bile-producing edge he flaunts in his tummyache ads. For his role in said primetime drama will be one of "lead mind-hunter." You see, apparently, as singing Jews age, they begin to look capable of making invasive explorations into dark depths--stomachs, brains, what have you. Which may account for why my gastroenterologist always appeared to be peering into the subconscious of a serial killer when he returned to me the results of various acid-reflux tests. The real lesson to be learned here? Let your bile work for you. Just because you used to make millions causing with your oh-so-tender voice nice Brooklyn moms to kvell doesn't mean you have to feel bad about your ability to turn that tenderness into the sheer, unadulterated world-hating for which only the role of a "mindhunter" on a "serious" CBS crime drama calls.

milonakis miloshnakis

Don't Cry For Me, Milonakis
TV Review: MTV's Andy Milonakis Show
for The New York Sun
By Adam Baer

A couple of months ago, when I first read in Variety that the 29-year-old Lower East Side comedian Andy Milonakis had scored a development deal with MTV to write and produce his own comedy show, I phoned my editor at this newspaper and asked for an assignment to interview the man. He wasn’t just newsworthy as a local comic made good. He had gotten noticed in a particularly zeitgeisty manner: He had made homemade videos of his sketches. He had posted them on his blog. And he had then heard from writers at the ABC late-night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" that they: a) found his work hilarious, b) had sent it up to the Oz-like Mssr. Kimmel, and that c) he just might be taking his comedy from the bowels of Downtown New York to that more culturally astute neighborhood called Hollywood.

No, the Internet wasn’t exactly new, but video-blogging -- so successfully, in fact, that it could result in a development deal -- was. So I was particularly surprised when MTV denied me an opportunity to interview their new star. Was Mr. Milonakis shunning the opportunity for press? Did he feel, with the considerable Hollywood muscle of such A-list players as Jimmy Kimmel and the people who bought “Britney and Kevin: Chaotic” behind him, that he simply didn’t need notice in a New York daily newspaper?  I was vexed.

My confusion has dissolved, however, upon witnessing, a few Sunday nights ago, the premiere of “The Andy Milonakis Show”: twenty scripted minutes of one to two-minute sketches -- a senseless video blog on the fastest T1 line known to man.

Milonakis, it seems, didn’t deny us an interview because he felt above the level of local press. He most likely denied one because, as he has proved in his television debut, he doesn’t have anything original to say.

The cherubic, chubby-cheeked man-child with the high voice and ill-fitting shirts began his TV debut by opening a giant Pez dispensor in the shape of a chicken -- only for said chicken to then speak to its owner the words: “You’re a fat murderer.” The rest of the show’s opening continued in this random, pointless vein.

Picture the scenarios: 1) Andy walking up to random Lower East Side seniors thanking them for their tapioca pudding. (See the humor? Andy has never met these people before, and they might get confused as opposed to annoyed because they’ve actually lived longer then 29 stunted years.) 2) Andy speaking to his dog as his dog dreams of shooting him. 3) Andy placing a delivery for Chinese food only for the delivery man to arrive to find Andy bound to a chair with peanut butter slathered on his face. (At which point, Andy asks the man to apply more peanut butter to his doughy chin, then screams at him.) 4) Andy accidentally cutting his finger off while chopping vegetables and then taping it back on.

This is certainly what I would have e-mail my boss about were I lucky enough to have scored a writing job on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Of course seeming higher than thou isn’t necessarily a fair way to approach comedy scripted for the mature audience that enjoys MTV’s “Sunday Stew” programming. Yet as a young man who isn’t so far out of Ashton Kutcher’s age-range, I admit that I do, occasionally, watch “Punk'd.” I do enjoy the car-modding show “Pimp My Ride.” And I do -- he admits sheepishly -- ocassionally surf the Internet while (this season's particularly bland season of) “The Real World” blares in the background.

Just because a channel and its most heavily watched primetime slot is skewed to teenage tastes, after all, doesn’t mean you have to completely dumb down its offerings. But what Milonakis's show proves -- in a latter portion of the program, he makes a homemade advertisement for spoons, explaining their many, unique, uses -- is that you don’t have to be funny to get a comedy deal. You just have to look freakish, immitate some David Letterman "man on the street interviews," and scream common-sense observations. And it will help considerably if you can lower the country’s collective attention span even more powerfully than the Internet by throwing piles upon piles of super-short clips on top of one another so that: a) there’s absolutely no cohesion to your show, and b) your viewers won’t crave any next week -- from you or anyone else.

Towards the end of Milonakis’s debut show "Crunk" rapper ‘Lil Jon -- famous, among other things, for screaming the word “What” with his phlegmy bass-baritone -- makes an appearance. He speaks to Andy through his TV, then jumps out of the box to share and spit some “Fruity Pebbles” cereal in the comedian’s face. The semantic threads of reality TV are knotted here in the most distasteful bundle. The conceit is that ‘Lil Jon is so big -- so untouchable -- that this reality-thwarting act could only have been dreamed up by a crazed boy-comic who makes Internet videos in his apartment.

How sad, however, that the opposite is true: Not only does neither character deserve his fame, however miniscule it is. Neither character is fantastical. Each is as everyday as that random, forgettable schmuck who screams at you on the street on your way out to run an errand. And when’s the last time you laughed with, as opposed to at, someone like that?

lost ears

Nancy Franklin is one of my favorite TV critics -- basically because she isn't a TV critic, but a writer who thinks creatively about television (the business, the content, the social impact). Hence, the excitement that struck me yesterday upon seeing that she had finally taken on J.J. Abrams's "Lost" in her most recent column. Unlike other critiques, Franklin's articulates perfectly the reason "Lost" has its hold on both TV addicts and network detractors. It's a show that toys with itself, at once mocking its inherent absurdity in our "Survivor"-driven, war-on-terror global culture and then, at times, driving headlong through it with absolute conviction.

The characters make up a mini U.N.—in addition to Jack and Kate, who are white Americans, there’s a Korean couple, an African-American father and son, a one-hit British rock musician and heroin addict, an Iraqi communications expert (the show upped its ante considerably by making this character a former member of the Republican Guard).

Another example of Abrams's meta humor is the titling of one of the first season's later episodes "Deus ex machina." It's the show where Locke and Boone, before the latter perishes, find a second plane hanging over a cliff -- a seemingly forced narrative event mocked in the name of its chapter. So, yes, Franklin is surely onto something.

The problem with her article -- and I offer this critique in the most respectable spirit possible -- is that she strays far off course as she ties things up, missing the boat on the show's musical score, a product of composer Michael Giacchino. To wit:

“Lost” relies a little too heavily on shaky-cam effects and bang-on-a-can music for its unsettling quality.

In fact, Giacchino's music, as you may have read in these pages, follows religiously the witty "meta" attitude that renders "Lost" so delicious to Franklin. His music can be enjoyed for it surface virtues: a Dr. Moreau-ian antidote to stranded-island drama tunes made of Bach-quality chorales, low harp plucks, and atonal clusters. But it is also never too quick to take itself and its show too seriously, life-lovingly employing ponticello tremolos and jaggedly beat drums to thoroughly locate the drama in its genre -- in a decades-long dialogue about what genre means. It is this perpetually written orchestral score, indeed, that gives the show much of the flavor Franklin enjoys, even if she isn't consciously aware of this. Without it, "Lost" would have to work much harder to both provide the narrative escapism we love and tartly skewer its existence. (P.S. The phrase "Bang On A Can" also isn't an insult anymore...)

if you don't know me by now

Larry David on why he supports John Bolton.

no soup for you

Why it took this long, I will never understand, but the AP reports that Al Yeganeh, otherwise known as Yev "The Soup Nazi" Kasem, in the infamous Seinfeld episode that popularized his Midtown storefront, will finally franchise and take his soup national. 10 clams buys you 8 ounces of soup, bread, a drink, and fresh fruit or a chocolate. Have your money ready or a 15-year-old Iowa high-school student with acne and a squeaky voice will have to deny you your watered-down order.

lachey lane

According to this Craigslist ad, a mere $1,000 buys me the month of May separated by just one street from the fabulousness of the sparring Newlyweds. This, to answer everyone who asks me this question on a daily basis, is why I moved to L.A.

touche, mtv

Annoyed that you can't find a show on MTV about, you know, music? Fuse -- the other MTV --  claims its new lineup of original programming will stay true to the network's non-sequitor of a mission ("One Nation Under Music") while providing an original brand of TV entertainment. Buena suerte, gente.

rage against the machine

From Nikki Finke's latest Deadline Hollywood column about the ridiculous perks offered to the jokers who run our consumer-entertainment culture: "Wanna hurl? ... [consider the] the profligacy of a public company shameless enough to reimburse Les Moonves, who lives in Los Angeles but also has a New York apartment, $105,000 for the period he stayed in New York at his apartment instead of at a hotel, or Tom Freston, who is based in New York but also has a residence in Los Angeles, $43,100 for the time he spent staying at his L.A. home instead of a hotel. ... Talk about chutzpah: This is paying these guys to live in their own homes."

michael giacchino resurrects the lost art of original tv music

Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2005

Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 5

"Musician has big dreams for small screen"

By Adam Baer

A plane has crashed on a mysterious island in the South Pacific. The ominous pluck of a low harp captures the sense of doom as survivors inspect the fuselage, searching for a radio. Violins tremble. Suddenly, alarm. Syncopated beats erupt like the plane's walls struck by a frantic timpanist. A monster is hunting the castaways, and it won't take no for an answer.

Such is life on the ABC series "Lost," the brainchild of J.J. Abrams ("Alias," "Felicity") currently reviving the redemptive virtues of well-crafted fictional television. 

But while the quickly beloved serial drama has drawn acclaim for its spellbinding narrative, it is also among only a handful of shows resurrecting the use of strong original scores and live orchestras, under the hand of rising composer Michael Giacchino.

For film and television music aficionados, Giacchino, 37, a boyish young man with a friendly demeanor, may well be the next John Williams, the dean of Hollywood composers responsible for iconic scores to "Jaws," "Star Wars" and "Superman." Except, in addition to scoring blockbuster films like "The Incredibles," Giacchino brings his music into living rooms on the small screen -- each week.

take me out (of business)

The Sony PSP is out. You've undoubtedly read about it in your local newspaper. It's a video iPod-cum-tiny Playstation built on the Nintendo Gameboy mold, spread wide.  And it's Sony's one shot to win back some street cred among people who actually choose to spend their money on middlebrow gadgetry. You see, Sony's electronics division hasn't been doing so well (surprise). The company's frighteningly overpriced Vaio laptops don't really provide anything unique -- and by now only sway style whores who fear the Mac switch.  The Network Walkman, Sony's answer to the iPod, isn't selling, mostly because it requires users to sign onto converting their music to the company's proprietary ATRAC audio file format. Even Sony's Cyber-shot digital cameras -- one of which I recently purchased on the recommendation of a professional paparazzo -- force you to spend more on recordable media (its Memory Stick duos cost way more than proletarian CompactFlash cards). And let's not forget that our beloved Sony innovators (from Japan) are trying to adapt to a new CEO, Howard Stringer, a Brit. So you can see why the PSP has so much riding on it. Sony isn't going to lower its prices. It's going to try to use a handheld gadget to power the conglomerate through its tough times -- much in the same way Apple used its iPod. The problem? The PSP isn't an iPod. For one thing, it requires you to buy new games *and* movies recorded on a proprietary Sony format (yes, the company would hate it if you could actually use its products in conjunction with other brands -- especially since it owns the rights to so many films). More damning, the product isn't unique. Sure it can surf the wireless internet, sure it's cooler than the Texas-Instruments calculater-chic Nintendo DS. The problem, though, is that it forces you to adapt to it -- as opposed to the iPod, which *invited* you to try it out. On top of this, Sony is marketing the thing with perhaps the most overplayed anthem of the year, Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out." I suppose we are supposed to listen to the youthful hipness of the song, the message of its lyrics, and associate it with this lifestyle-changing object the way others have associated U2's "Vertigo" with the discombobulating brilliance of the iPod. But here, too, Sony has tried to hard and thought too little. "Take Me Out" can't be a new anthem. It's already been played between scenes in the staid NBC "Friends" spinoff "Joey" (to name just one common place it's everpresent). It's already the soundtrack to the bridge-and-tunnel Friday night parties that happen in has-been clubs. It's already commercial. It's devoid of originality, and that's antithetical to a product promising to revamp one's life. Sony, what are you doing? With all your resources you're making a mockery of yourself. It's well-intentioned of course. But if a 28-year-old pajama-wearing writer who has never worked in either the consumer electronics or entertainment business can figure out your weaknesses, that's got to be a sign that signing a new CEO should just be the beginning for you.

finally getting into the mix

So I've observed all the intriguing and hilarious random movie quotes from "About Last Night's" Our Girl In Chicago and "The Rest Is Noise's" Alex Ross, and now I have a new game: Let's quote our five favorite TV quotes that come to mind without thinking. Here are mine (please keep in mind each springs to life five or more from the same source, but I'm only choosing one from each show for reasons of diversity). Read 'em after the jump. Respect.

oscar thoughts

1. On Chris Rock and his oh-so-hard-hitting political humor: Um, it wasn't. And how was it going to be? How many censors and sponsors had to read it over with a comb before giving the OK? And why would a comedian who's generally regarded as the funniest working stand-up in America (one with terrible box-office sales and no acting talent) fuck with our oh-so-openminded nation and the Hollywood schlock-producers who feed it (and him)? Rock's monologue was safe (insert his stretch of a joke about how if W. worked at the Gap his register would be short, and that he'd start a war with Banana Republic), and that's the end of it. Apparently -- hold onto your seats! -- America wears khakis and won't be offended if you make mild jokes about the president that relate to our daily hunt-and-gathering sessions in the mall. Holla.

2. Best song? Why is there a category called "Best Song"? Why has it existed all these years except to make more money for Hollywood and the music industry? I may have only taken a few years of film classes, but since when does writing a song to be placed in the middle of a movie have anything to do with, you know, movie making production standards? Is it me, or have some movies just incorporated songs from time to time? I.E. Those produced by Disney or Pixar execs who decide to hire Sting or Celine Dion (or now lovely Beyonce) to cant about love over smooth synthesized love melodies ("A whole new world...") that will play at big-hair Staten Island weddings next year. Next year, let's ax "Best Song" and include a category for "Best Soundtrack." If original movie music is in as much of a slump as it is, why not also honor the art of picking and mixing pre-produced music to speak for your film's emotional climate?

3. And on the issue of movie music: Why was the evertalented composer Michael Giacchino of "The Incredibles" (as well as "Lost" and "Alias") robbed of a nomination? So John Williams could score yet another unwinnable nominee appearance with tunes for an unoriginal sequel (i.e. the latest incarnation of Harry Potter)?

4. Scorcese, and I love him, shouldn't fret. Did he really think that those eyebrows were cute enough to woo Hollywood hardliners away from tall, steely Clint and his General Motors pickup trucks? Also, the Aviator may have deserved Best Picture from a technical standpoint, but even Marty admitted in the NY Times that it wasn't a labor of love project but merely an assignment.

5. Swankified: If I hear one more comment about a trailer-trash girl making good, I'm going to absolutely lose it. Fine the girl can act but she snarls. Why -- despite her red-state appeal -- is she so beloved by Hollywood? (Ok, maybe yet another hypothetical question wasn't the best way to state this.)

6. I won my Oscar pool because I picked smartly in the categories of Best Documentary and Short Film (live action), among other things. I didn't see any of the movies but how could a movie about sex slaves ("Born Into Brothels") and one called "Wasp" not intrigue the valueriffic Academy?

7. Scarlett Johanssen (and, yes, she is a gorgeous ditz) hosted the science and technical awards. No, really! Watch the madness here and see why she already beat SNL to the punch. No parodies necessary here. Has anyone ever thought of casting her highness in something comedic?