becoming a loser and retroactive salmonella recall

When you begin writing about derivative tame network dramas as if you are engaged in passionate literary warfare against various ideologies, such as the NBC show REVOLUTION, you are a loser living in a basement apartment at the dog racetrack.  Living and dying over the minor details and indistinct characters in non sequiter flashbacks is not healthy.

On this week's episode, "No Quarter,"  Miles and his niece, with a groups of rebels trying to restore the United States (like the Postman), find themselves trapped by the militia and decide to tunnel out.  We learn that Miles used to command the militia where he killed people (like the Postman was a member of the Holnist militia).  The characters are aghast, its not like he raped or pillaged which seems more likely in this alternate future than this tame outrage.  Meanwhile the brother Matheson remains prisoner to the militia and the English woman, Maggie, and Aaron, google exec find a computer.  The mysteries are beginning to unravel at a pace that puts one to sleep rather than spark interest.

As a loser of the highest order it is my humble duty to waste more time and complain bitterly about this show's inability to overcome its silly nature that makes the Adam West Batman show seem like an progenitor of Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones.  Sword fights are lame unless there is the threat of death or decent choreography.  Again this brings me to the more important issue at hand, JJ Abrams is lazy.  There it is its only libel if its not true.

JJ Abrams



In the middle of writing this post I received a robocall message from Kirtland (COSTCO) on my answering machine.  The smoked salmon may have salmonella.  What more fitting bacteria could there be than that?  The irony escaped them.  Its raw, obviously it may contain bacteria and cause health problems.  I have been eating their smoked salmon every morning for over a year and now realize I may have been food poisoned every day for over a year.  I appreciated the phone call.

  

Revolution or the JJ Abrams version of the Postman

Apologies if you are expecting the cast list for Steel Man, the Joseph Stalin sitcom.  Its difficult getting actors to sign with a fictional tv show that exists entirely in my head for no money.

The new NBC drama REVOLUTION is a story set 15 years into the future following a total electrical blackout rendering the world in an apparent survivalist mode as marauding militia roam the country enforcing their law for a mysterious warlord named Munro, although spelled differently multiple times between two episodes.  Continuity is not priority one here, this is a JJ Abrams production after all and its about speed not content. The show is definitely a network program and often restrained in its silly action sequences that resemble Errol Flynn in Robin Hood. 

Giancarlo Esposito

The main character, Katniss, I mean Charlotte Matheson is a teenage huntress living in a hamlet with her family.  When the Militia lead by Giancarlo Esposito kills her father and kidnaps her brother Charlotte and her coterie that includes her fathers English? girlfriend and an overweight former google exec, the comic relief,  head to Chicago to find her Uncle, Miles Matheson, a former Marine.  Charlotte is the moral compass and heroine on her journey from the ordinary.  There are some emerging storylines and dimensions to the characters that give the show some mystery, such as why the power failed and what is on those pendant flash drives?  This is a solid start and has great tv potential to survive its first season.

Charlotte Matheson and coterie

When I hear people talk about how original or new this is, especially the producers, network, and the actors, I have an epileptic fit because its grossly untrue and I don't have much going on in my life.  Its like when the film 3 Kings was released and the studio denied that it was a ripoff of Kelley's Heroes, the entertainment reporters didn't understand what plagiarism entails.  Or passing off an adapted screenplay as original, it becomes meta problems.  This show was heavily "influenced" by the 1997 epic Kevin Costner flop, the POSTMAN.  If you don't remember the basic plot of the Postman, and the David Brin novel it was based upon, it is thus:   the story is set 15 years into the future following a total electrical blackout rendering the world in an apparent survivalist mode as marauding militia roam the country enforcing the law of 8 for a mysterious warlord named Nathan Holn, here under the command of General Bethlehem (Will Patton).  The Holnists bear brands of the number 8 (infinity) on their arms as the Munro Militia all bear the letter M.  Both burn American flags and forcibly conscript soldiers, as well as repeating lines from the movie and tv show verbatim.

General Bethlehem





Because I have thoughts about this show that are not groveling praise does not mean I will not watch the show.  Despite these meaningless details REVOLUTION has a heroine with a crossbow in skin tight pants, subtle HUNGER GAMES nod production team, who looks a lot better than Kevin Costner.

Stalin Sitcom

This is an idea that I had with my friend Jeremy Millard that deserves to be heard.

Here is the pitch for the situational comedy show that is 2 Broke Girls, Anger Management, Black Adder meets Gulag Archipelago.  Before you say that's a terrible idea and esoteric, the theme song is "I'm a Steel Man" (Soul Man by Sam and Dave).  That should set the tone that this is not history just a mockery of television and the Soviet Union.



The premise its 1938.  Stalin's Mom moves into the Kremlin to live with her son and ruins his life.  Stalin is a single father trying to raise sons Yakov and Vasily and daughter Svetlana.  His two dead wives, Ekaterina and Nadezhda are feuding characters that visit Stalin on a periodic basis.  Stalin cant get anything done with his mother hovering and getting in his business about the five year plans, the gulags and why he never called her in Georgia.

Stalins Mom



Stalin's bros are Molotov, Voroshilov and Beria who wander around Kremlin aimlessly pretending to be busy and avoid Vasili Blokhin, the secret police executioner.  Blokhin keeps trying to lure people into the basement to shoot them.  Blokhin kills at least one guest every episode.  This is one of the running gags, like Trotsky being blamed for the rain or soggy pancakes, and keeping young children away from Beria.  Beria is like the pedophile George Costanza.

Beria

 



In the first episode we find Stalin and writer, Isaac Babel having a discussion at dinner.  Stalin tells Babel, "You have not written anything in twenty years!  Why am I paying you?  Ill bring Gorky back from the dead."  Stalin's Mom hits Stalin in the back of the head, "Ioseb you're being rude to your guest, its not like hes a Uzbek."  Queue the laugh track, rimshot and Kat Dennings effusive cleavage.  Had to make a reference to 2 Broke Girls because that is the kind of mathematical sitcom form that would work.

Kat Dennings



STALIN, would work for CBS.  NBC likes the handheld camera and monkey doctor thing.  FOX if Married with Children was still on.  ABC is too family oriented and may not get such a dark storyline.  Cartoon Network is too lazy and approves anything that came out of an improv skit.

STAY TUNED FOR CASTING IN LATER POSTS...Rowan Atkinson?  Charlie Sheen?

Bridge Hate 1: Champlain Bridge

While I hate many bridges and other inanimate objects, there are those people, you know who I mean, who love bridges and waste their lives trying to convert us to join their cult.  It is only a bridge.  It cannot love you back or hold your hair back over the toilet seat when you have had too many shots playing can I out drink Richard Burton?

The new Champlain Bridge opened in November 2011 replacing its rusted predecessor, which had been there since 1929.  It is a beautiful blue structure with fluid arches at its crest looming over the narrow passage between the ruins of Crown Point in New York and Chimney Point in Vermont.  Completed in two years by a German engineering firm, it cost was estimated at $76 million.

 

When the states demolished the old bridge with explosives in late 2009 hundreds of Vermonters living and working in Western Addison County lamented the long commutes and disruption to local businesses because they had to take a ferry across the two thousand feet passage.  The New Yorkers did not care and moved on like rational people.  The hundreds, needing more attention than a single actress or any of Judd Apatow's children twitter, convinced the local television stations in Burlington, Plattsburgh and Albany to do emotion driven stories about the hardships that the people of Chimney Point had to endure bridgeless.  Remember, its just a bridge.  The hundreds got their golden bridge and swindled millions from NYSDOT and the Vermont Agency for Transportation that should have been spent paving roads that more than fifty people use in a day.

 



"It's a critical link for west-central Vermont and New York State, and vital to Vermont's economic strength, as well as for the people who rely upon that bridge for work and recreation," said Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin.

In the press release, linked below, Governor Shumlin is not the only elected official cashing in on the bridge and making it the greatest human achievement of all time.  Remember, its just a bridge.
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/110711OpeningofLakeChamplainBridge

As the politicians take credit and inflate the critical existential importance of this bridge to the few hundred voting people and their taxable revenue, they should remember like any wide receiver celebrating catching the ball that it is their fucking job to fix the bridge and do not deserve the adoration for following protocol. 



The two minutes hate for the Champlain Bridge is not because of the object itself but rather because the bridge lovers were so indignant about their bridge from nowhere to nowhere and how obviously important they are all hundred of them in the cosmic scheme. Remember, its just a bridge.

If you would like to join the cult of the Champlain Bridge please use the link below:
http://champlainbridgecommunity.org/index.html

Brownell Hall (Heartburn)

In the ghost darkness of the cinderblock room,
under the faded covers, waiting for sleep
uncomfortable dreaming of food. 
stomach wrenches hard
acids against its walls
burning flesh inside out. 
Ephemeral flashes of silver morning light
crash through wired window curtains
blow nascent heat into my chamber of vomit.

Talus Road (1 July 2005)

twilight yellowed after the storm
forest mountains hold low vapors
shades of devoured trees; chrysalis tents
in empty homes still silence

muted humid colors flood
branches bare maple, birch, poplar
harsh pink cast on stones
property lines unclear and open

trucks pound down gravel road
pond rests collapsed trees beneath surface skin
village green crowded and loud
eve comes with cold blue fog

this wasted day, this arriving night

16 August 2004

Lying in the deep center bow of the horrendous Castro bed sideways with the aging jack Russell terrier, Millie, in my armpit and the brown dachshund, Gus, in my crotch. My back is as numb as my small hands are trapped underneath the reddened flesh festering in body odor and the burning pinpricks of heat amassing on my skin.

Through the hand-blown sash windowpanes projected up on the studio roof I see the trickle of opaque light and shadow reflecting from the front and rear lights of dumptrucks, diesel rigs, loud subwoofered bass house tracks exploding out from a disheveled Japanese car that escaped death from a scrap metal yard.  Through the muslin veil of dust mite infested curtains the cars zoom by leaving a trail of dust and faint sounds in low decibels vibrating above the murmur of crickets, flies, and owls.  I hear their songs in and outside of the tattered and shred screen porch off to my distant left behind the pillows out past the kitchen/dining room to the mowed valley floor beneath Spruce, Burnt, the Gallop and Derby Hill on the mountain road.

Above me through the ceiling window, the glimmering stars and specs of folding Venus, red Mars and the gas giants surface currents flowing in tandem rhythms of riverine matter held together firmly by gravity and other forces of physics.  Thoughts flicker like drunken pixies in the forest groves about existence, our odd species and my futures that cannot escape our future.  Wandering back down from ethereal nonsense I hit the granite face hard in the echo chamber of my mind, into aimless desultory depression dreaming of future ex-wives.  Names that I will forget cascade down through the subconscious cataracts.