Things I Find In My Basement

PART OF A CONTINUING SERIES.



Pilot episode, St. Elsewhere, VHS copy, copyright 1992. The episode is from 1982.

In my last post I said Lost has potential to be one of the great dramatic series of all time if it doesn't fall on its face during its remaining episodes.

St. Elsewhere, I'd say, already has this distinction.

It Floated My Boat

It usually happens on Thursday morning, when a friend sends out a "day-after" review and analysis of Lost that always has proven to be an insightful read.

His email this morning was short. He summed up the episode in one word: "heartbreaking."

Last night's episode was TV at its best, and Lost at its best.

If Lost can finish strong in its remaining episodes, it has a shot to be ranked right up there with the all-time best dramas in television history.

***

In Doc Jensen's review of the season finale for Entertainment Weekly, he uses two words: "wow" and "sensational." You won't get an argument from me. Read it here.

RIDDLE ME THIS: Here's a question for Lost fans. In the flash-forward scene, a drunken/drugged out Jack tells the chief of surgery to go upstairs and see if his dad is even worse off than he is. Is Jack's dad still alive, or was "drunk guy" Jack just confused and being non-sensical?

DVR + American Idol = Missed Ending

With two hours of Lost to watch last night, and the excruciating (in parts) two-hour finale of American idol, Wally and I decided to watch both shows on DVR, fast-forwarding through as many commercials as possible.

Getting through four hours of both shows only took about 3 hours of commercial-free time, if you don't count the Ford commercial/music video that was built into American Idol. (I'm really not sure those music videos are going to translate into more car sales for Ford, but who knows?)

One problem: I never saw the moment when Jordin won American Idol; the show must have went long (intentionally?) and my DVR cut off the show during what I think was the last commercial break.

So what did I miss?

Mark The Time

It was about quarter after the hour, May 23, 2007. This is when American Idol officially jumped the shark with a Golden Idol Award bit with contestant Margaret Fowler that was painfully unfunny, not at all entertaining and inappropriate for a show that wants the audience to take the competition (at this stage) very seriously.




This was so embarrassingly phony (fake cell phone call, staged kiss) and just God-awful, that I started blushing.

I'll never wear banana-yellow again.

My Coffee Pot is Fixed

The Cup of Joe will be back online tomorrow with a review of the big Lost finale. And, if I can catch up on my Tivo after three days of watching no TV and reading no newspapers, I might have something to say about the next American Idol, whose name I'm guessing won't be Blake.

See you then!

I'll Be Right Back

Due to technical difficulties involving my 10-cup Mr. Coffee deluxe coffee maker, hand signed by Joe Dimaggio at a baseball card show 10 years ago, The Cup of Joe has been offline for the last couple days as I work with a team of engineers to fix the problem.

I'll be back soon, real soon -- and I hope by then that pot of coffee is half full, not half empty.

Things I Find In My Basement

PART OF A CONTINUING SERIES.

At various times, including 1994 and 1997, I've received a subscription to Playboy magazine for my birthday.

This was before, as my friend Missy says, I "caught the gay."

For some reason I didn't throw away all the magazines, keeping the ones (in a "kinda gay way") with potential camp value. For example, I have several with Anna Nicole on the cover and the one with Farah on the cover.

I can't wait to re-read the Pete Townshend interview:

Birds of a Feather: English Majors and 'Lost'

A large percentage of my friends in college were English majors; I was not. They liked reading novels and fiction because they found it fun ferreting out hidden meanings and symbolism in literary works; I just liked a good story.

For me, it was "just the facts, mam." This was enough. Besides, I wasn't smart enough for (or didn't want to bother with) all that "fancy figurin'" over allegory, symbolism and foreshadowing.

In other words, I majored in business.

Years later, I find this sort of fancy figurin' to be a little more fun.

What makes me think of this, and why I bring it up, is because this reminds me about what I like so much about the ABC show Lost. The show can appeal strongly to both sets off people -- those who like a surface story and those who want to be challenged with hidden meanings and what's boiling just beneath the surface, the MBA types and the MFA's.

People can enjoy Lost on multiple levels -- on the "just the facts" level and on a much deeper level, whether it involves biblical allusions to various Old and New Testament characters, literary references to Charles Dickens and many other writers, or movie references to the Wizard of Oz. I could go on and on.

If you're an old English major looking for some strong writing about Lost from a thinking man's perspective, nobody does a better anaylysis than Doc Jensen at Entertainment Weekly. Here's is Doc's latest take on this week's episode of Lost.

***

Of all my English major friends from college, not a single one watches Lost. This, I think, is a shame, because I think they'd like it, particularly my friends Frenchie and Elgy.

So here is my challenge for them:

* Tonight, watch or Tivo the Lost recap show on ABC.
Producers are promising "a look at some of the questions - and answers - about the mysteries of Lost, in preparation for the two-hour season finale!"
* Next Wednesday, watch the finale.

For people new to Lost: If you're not entertained or intrigued after watching these three hours, stop watching. But I bet this won't happen.

I think new viewers could get into the story fairly quickly, and that Doc Jensen's next-day wrap-ups would soon become a must-read.

Even for non-English majors -- like me.

Unreal

As if we needed more proof about just how fake reality TV really is.

Are Sitcoms Dead?

This is a question posed by an op-ed columnist in the New York Times a couple days ago. You can read the column here.

With this in mind, I'm inviting in the comments section your opinion for the worst sit-coms of all time.

I can start this out by throwing out Gilligan/Bob Denver's pilot for SCAMPS (also starring a very young and "not bald" Joey Lawrence and written by Sherwood Schwartz) as a serious contender for one of the worst sitcoms of all time. I believe it only aired once, in the early 1980s. I think I was one of about 11 people watching it live. You can watch more below.

And a serious contender for the all-time worst sit-com to air more than once could possibly be After M*A*S*H, the dreadful follow-up to M*A*S*H that was set in a midwest veteran's hospital following the end of the Korean War. Watching After M*A*S*H was more painful than meatball surgery.

American Idol Question

Were Wally and I the only people to notice that the talented Melinda Doolittle messed up the lyrics at the beginning of her last song last night?

Replay it on your Tivo, and watch her eyes after she messes up.

It's a true "what the F did I just do" moment. None of the judges seemed to notice it, and they didn't mention it.

***

I have a feeling Melinda may be going home tonight.

But it really doesn't matter: She doesn't need to win the show to be successful.

... And The Tony Award Goes To

One of the interesting things about The Sopranos, during its eight-year, six-season run on HBO, was that even though Tony Soprano was a thief and a murderer, and not above killing family and friends, he somehow remained likable.

The fact that he saw a psychiatrist and relied on Prozac and anti-depressants to get through life made him more human, more accessible, more like the rest of us.

Following last Sunday's episode, however, and with three more episodes to go, I don't think we've ever seen this character so completely amoral, so completely empty of human goodness, so self-absorbed and immature and so completely, completely unlikeable.

I only have one message for the character of Tony Soprano, and it involves me doing that "Italian thing" by flicking my hand to the chin.

***

Where should James Gandolfini pick up his Emmy?

I mean, really, why even both with the nominations? This is one of the best leading male performances I've ever seen on TV. I completely buy every single moment of his performance.

Coming Up Next: The Terrible Two's?

I'm pleased to announce that today is a birthday, a first birthday for The Cup of Joe.

This blog entered the world on May 15, 2006, with this post, a carefully thought out "mission statement" that took all of 20 seconds to write. Now, 623 posts later, the blog still lives.

What will the future hold? Will this blog survive to see a second birthday next year? Will regular readers and responders like Ralph Nader-voter JERCWE continue to hurt my feelings and drive me to drink? Will Ralph Nader run again in 2008 and ensure another Republican wins the White House?

Will even more of my eerily on-the-mark preditions for 2007 come true?

Will Lou Dobbs fall in love with an illegal alien and run away with her to Guadalajara along with her sons and cousins y tios? Will The Cup of Joe continue its exclusive Lou Dobbs "America At The Crossroads" Coverage well into 2007?

Could Mitt "Flip" Romney cause a major oil slick after swimming off the coast of Cape Cod?

I don't have answers to these questions. Yet.

But stay tuned!

***

Thanks to all who have linked to this blog in the last year; many of these cool blogs are listed at right in my relatively short blogroll.


I'm happy to link to other blogs, too, if you return the favor, as long as the blog is "safe for work" and not advocating anything offensive or hurtful. It doesn't matter where you land on the political spectrum, either: I like learning from all viewpoints, whether you're supporting Ralph Nader for president ... or Ralph Wiggums.

This Gives Me Joy

How many spider men can you fit inside a Jamba Juice? David Letterman "crunched the data" on this important question last week.

You can watch below -- until, of course, CBS pulls the video from YouTube:



(My favorite part is at the 8:29 mark.)

A Writer Who Makes Me Say 'Yikes!'

Fred Barnes, the guy who wrote the hagiographic biography of George Bush ("Rebel in Chief") that Carm Soprano is a big fan of, recently wrote an essay called "Can Bush Recover?" for the Wall Street Journal, where he offered some advice for Republican presidential candidates: "The best tactic is to build up the president, not tear him down."

Barnes' argument is based on what Republicans need to do to ensure they win the 2008 election, not necessarily about doing the right thing or following one's convictions.

Karl Rove must be proud. Carm, too.

In other words, don't mention that the emperor has no clothes if it'll hurt your chances to win an election.

YIKES.

Monday Quick Reads

* Were the two pals on the old show Bosom Buddies, the first season of which is now out on DVD, cross-dressing for more than just the obvious reason? At least one writer questions whether the two bosom buddies were "hiding something from themselves as well as their neighbors," calling Henry Desmond (Peter Scolari) a "caricature of a gay man in the 80s: tight Izod shirt, gold chains, modified Dorothy Hamill hairdo." LINK.


* Lord of the Rings: The Musical lost a ton of money when it ran for six months in Toronto last year, with Ben Brantley at the New York Times calling it a "murky, labyrinthine wood from which no one emerges with head unmuddled." Now, with the show being retooled and shortened and with an infusion of another $25 million from investors, the show is opening in London. Let's hope that this ring proves to be a better fit this time around -- with critics and with audiences. LINK.

* According to an AP article, Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson "cited a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the restroom in explaining on Saturday why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker." This is what you'd call "digging the hole deeper." Maybe he shouldn't have slammed that Big Gulp before the debate started? LINK.

* Leonard Nimoy, known for his artistic endeavors outside of acting, including writing poetry, is also a photographer. His latest mission: Photographing nude women who are fat. OK, I acknowledge that this could lend itself to a lot of jokes, but in our age of disgustingly or morbidly thin women (Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton, etc.) serving as role models to young girls at a time when eating disorders are out of control, I think what he's doing in a fine thing. May this photographer's work live long and prosper. LINK.

Blogging's Sworn Enemy: Nice Weather

Good weather is no friend to blogging, which is why the posts were so light last week. This should change this week.

And it couldn't come sooner: This week I promise to announce two very, very special birthday announcements that could change this blog FOREVER!**

** It's highly unlikely these announcements will change
anything, much less this blog FOREVER.