Who Knew One Pistol Could Bring Our Mighty Army to Its Knees

Two old men had the following conversation in my head today and I felt like I should share:

"You've been in the bathroom awhile, man. Some shit went down."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. The other day a man walked into a crowded room with two handguns and opened fire. He somehow managed to kill 13 people and wound another 30 before being shot four times by a responding police officer who he also shot four times."

"Damn, what a gruesome story. Where did it happen? A school? A post office? The Republican National Headquarters?"

"Haha, yeah right--like anybody could get within 100 yards of that place with a gun... It happened at a military base in Texas crammed full of 50,000 soldiers, many of them trained for grueling warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Ni**a what?! That guy must have been some kinda bloodthirsty elite commando warrior gone rogue or something...wow...does Arnold have an alibi?"

"Whoa, whoa--settle down, it wasn't anything of the sort. The guy was a 39 year-old rotund military psychologist afraid of going to war."

"Shut the fuck up!"

"It's okay, baby--the police will be here any minute to save us."

Maybe one of the reasons we are having so much trouble in our endless war overseas is because a building full of trained soldiers can't disarm one man with a couple of pistols--they have to wait for a 5'4" female COP to drive over to the scene and throw herself in front of some bullets.

The soldiers even let this asshole RE-LOAD not once, not twice, but three times, for fuck sake, since he shot over 100 rounds of ammunition and the highest capacity clip for the FN 5.7 pistol he used (he never fired the .357 Magnum) is 30 rounds.

Note: There was an attempt in 2005 to make this pistol illegal, but it somehow failed...thanks, Bush.

Seriously, as tragic as it is that so many innocent people died, how the fuck is a lone psychiatrist able to get off that many rounds of ammunition in a room full of fucking battle-ready SOLDIERS?! Are they all named Buster Bluth or what?


I feel like if this happened in a high school locker room somewhere, some bone-headed-heart-of-gold football player would have clocked this guy and saved his classmates, even if he knew he might get shot to death in the process.

Not one soldier could fall on this grenade? Not one soldier had a gun to take him out? An entire platoon couldn't have bum-rushed him and taken him out with a few casualties?

How are all these 'soldiers' feeling now, knowing they are all going off to war surrounded by a bunch of selfish chickenshits? It must be rough knowing the guy next to you would rather duck behind a desk than attack a hostile enemy with his gun trained on his comrades.

Wait--are these soldiers even going to be allowed to go to war now? Or are they suffering from Pre-Traumatic-Stress Disorder and summarily relieved of active duty?

Doubtful--the army needs all the cannon fodder they can get these days, which is clearly the problem here...

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Priceless

Sifted from the Interweb, via Facebook:

Motivation: "You guys just found out your eHarmony dream-men
have been boning other people"

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The Cat from Hell

Hungover, tired as hell, damp from a shower, and dreading work, I opened the door to leave my apartment and heard a strange noise in the hallway.

"What is that strange noise?" I said to myself.

I perked my ears and listened closely, but didn't hear anything. I closed the door almost all the way, keeping my hand on the knob, and looked across the room at my sleepy-eyed girlfriend sitting up in bed, curious, confused.

"What's going on?"
"I heard a strange noise in the hallway. What do you think it is?"

I opened the door to get another listen and some sort of creature immediately shot through the crack like a bullet.

I jumped out of my shoes, onto the ceiling, and back into them. What was it? A diseased rat? Possum? Raccoon? Skunk? Feral dog?

As the faceless monster frantically darted around the apartment and my heartbeat worked its way back toward normal, I saw it was only a cat. I hate cats; they smell, I'm allergic, they're boring, arrogant, and rude. Would it bite me? Would it scratch me?


As I debated whether or not a squirrel or raccoon would have made a better foe, an unkempt middle-aged man stepped into the doorway and offered up some morning breath.

"I'm sorry. He's been a little crazy lately and he thinks he still lives here."

I recognized the man, Dennis, as the weird dude that lived in my apartment for years and years before moving into an identical apartment a mere two flights up. Even though we are probably more similar than I would like to admit--or maybe because of that fact--I was glad he decided not to cross the threshold and venture into my intimate space (it's an adorably/annoyingly small apartment).

When I toured my apartment...five years ago(?), trying to decided if the place was right for me, Dennis was in the throes of his big lazy move upstairs and pretty much all that remained were dozens upon dozens of milk crates stuffed with old records, stacked floor to ceiling along an entire wall. I'm a record collector myself, so you'd think I would think somebody who had tons of records would be cool, but these babies might as well have been yellowed newspapers--something about that gargantuan wall of musty records and its prominent location in the apartment screamed mentally-deranged loner pack-rat.


Based on that small bit of data, before I even met him, in my mind Dennis was a middle-aged hermitic freelance saxophone instructor or jazz music critic who decided years ago, maybe after his only girlfriend left him for their accountant, to hole up in an old brick building in Koreatown--probably since before the neighborhood was swallowed by the insatiable Korean monster and was still mostly Hispanic--smoking cigarettes with the shades drawn, never venturing outside save his midnight walks to the pleasantly uncrowded 24-hour grocery store and the ritualistic weekly moving of the ancient Volvo station wagon for street cleaning.

Not long after I moved into my apartment, I got a piece of Dennis' mail--which is the only reason I know his first name--and decided to give it to him by hand, since I knew where he lived and I was curious to see what he was like. Our neighborly interaction/intrusion of personal space lasted all of two seconds and did nothing but confirm my earlier impression about this guy's weirdness, reclusive nature, and potential for jazz saxophone instruction.

Dennis had long dirty-blond hair, wore tinted prescription glasses, didn't open the door more than 4 inches and never said a word when I politely handed him his mail and tried to make a bit of small talk (I hate small talk, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do).

To see this man standing inches from my face, at eight o'clock in the morning, years after our first/last meeting, seconds after being startled nearly to death by a crazed cat I never knew he had, and still stung by a hellacious hangover, was a bit much. I froze.

Luckily, my girlfriend leapt out of bed and corralled the cat before conversation between Dennis and I became necessary. Once the prickly pet was handed over and Dennis apologized for the intrusion, I nodded, closed the door, and took a breath.

"That cat scared the shit out of me!" I had to say out loud.

My girlfriend and I looked at each other as if we had both seen a ghost. Wishing to put the entire incident behind me, I opened the door for a third time, checked to make sure the coast was clear, and headed off to work, a bit closer to death than I was the last time I opened that portal to reality.

_

It Worked!

In light of my dressing-down of anybody who might compare filmmaking chump Jared Hess to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fox Searchlight has decided to shelve Gentlemen Broncos.

Or maybe it was a result of the disappointing opening weekend in NY/LA (come on, Searchlight--know your audience and premiere it in the Utah/Idaho/Oklahoma/Duh-ha-ha markets if you want a true read on how it rates).

Or maybe it was the fact that the movie just plain sucks and they are quietly admitting they have no idea what they are doing. Let us not forget the same 'studio' recently released Whip It like a fart in the wind and still seem to think they should sit at my dinner table.

Thoughts?

_

Recognize:

" { " is officially referred to as a "left curl brace," for those of y'all ignorant fools out there what didn't fuckin' already know that useful shit.

Now, try to work it into a conversation this week and see what happens. Get back to me.

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Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Gotta love Michelle Obama for her dedication to scaring children this Halloween. In other news, are those Klansmen in the background? Huh?

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You Wanna Know Why Network Television Sucks?

A lack of new blood on the creative end of things.

Case in point:

68 year-old James Burrows, who directed 75 episodes of Taxi (1978-82), also directed 238 episodes of Cheers, 32 episodes of Frasier, 20 episodes of Caroline in the City, 15 episodes of Friends, 187 episodes of Will & Grace, 17 episodes of Back to You, 26 episodes of Gary Unmarried, and an assortment of episodes of just about every TV show you have or have not heard of during the last 30 years.

Is there really such a dearth of talented directors out there that one man is allowed such a stranglehold on the boob tube for--literally--generations of viewers?

There isn't.

Is this purposefully-limited talent pool a big part of the reason why network TV shows are the most predictable, banal, stereotypical, humorless bullshit available to a consumer of media?

It is.

Mr. Burrows, a word of advice--do the world a favor and retire already. If you get bored and need something to do other than count your money, I think Wal-Mart is still on the lookout for greeters...

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Oh, no you didn't...

In his admonishing response to Manola Darghis' scathing review of the upcoming release Gentlemen Broncos, Richard Brody (of New Yorker magazine) went too far in his appraisal of director Jared Hess, no matter how good or bad that particular movie may be.

In light of the gratuitous bodily function jokes apparently present in Broncos, Brody claims the director that Jared Hess is most similar to--in all of film history--is none other than philosophical Italian provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Huh? Yeah. Peep this:

But then, she also thinks that Benjamin (Michael Angarano), the teen-ager at the film’s center—a science-fiction fantasist whose work is pilfered by a blocked, aging novelist and by a pair of local filmmakers—is a “rotten writer.” In fact, he’s the author of a new gospel, and Hess’s wondrously ingenuous filming of Benjamin’s visions are both as sublime and as crudely carnal as scripture itself. The grotesque bodily functions, human, animal, and alien, that the movie depicts unflinchingly—as well as the “unpleasant, unattractive characters” Dargis says the film is filled with—are the point. It’s easy to present the beautiful people and the scrubbed world as divine creations; Hess’s vision sacralizes what other filmmakers don’t. The director he’s closest to in this regard is Pier Paolo Pasolini (and Pasolini, too, had an extraordinary sense of the naïve, the repellent, and the ridiculous).

Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with Pasolini's work, but it is nothing like Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre, or Gentlemen Broncos. Nothing. Unless you find semi-amusing fart jokes and frightening, ritualistic depravity to prove a philosophical point one and the same.

Comparing Jared Hess to Pier Paolo Pasolini simply because they both made movies about outcasts living on the fringes of society is like comparing Scorsese to Taxi director James Burrows because they both made projects involving taxi drivers. There is nothing funny about Pasolini's depravity; there is nothing insightful about Hess' fart jokes.


Here is a quick recap of Jared Hess' life and works:

He is a 30 year-old heterosexual Mormon who studied film at Brigham Young University, is married to his college sweetheart, Jerusha Hess, has one child, lives in Salt Lake City, and has co-written and directed three feature-length oddball-comedies with his wife, one of which (Napolean Dynamite) became a cult hit.


Now, here is a quick recap of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life:

He studied literature and philosophy in college, was drafted into WWII, escaped from a Nazi prison to join his mother as a teacher of children in remote villages, was persecuted by the state due to his homosexuality and candor, became an accomplished poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, photographer, filmmaker, linguist, and political activist, troublesomely preached that a shift to communism was the only way to save Italy, had most of his films censored at one time or another due to their stark exploration of the depressing lives people led in the suburbs of Rome and their focus on sexual themes, and was brutally murdered by being repeatedly run over by his own car on a beach near Rome, not long before the premiere of what Time Out recently dubbed "The Most Controversial Film of All Time," Salo, his magnificent and horrifying adaptation of the the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, in which he calls out fascism for being not unlike sadomasochism.

Okay, so...a sheltered and ignorant Mormon (a Mormon, for Christ's sake!) out for cheap laughs by exploring the fictional lives of losers living on the fringes of society in Middle America is supposed to be comparable to a notoriously revolutionary, oft-censored, communist homosexual Italian poet/filmmaker who unflinchingly documented the darker side of humanity in his starkly realistic explorations of the depths of the mind and its potential for depravity? An artist whom intellectuals still revere 34 years after his death?

Ich don't think so, Richard Brody...

The confused Richard Brody

_

Gotta Love the Governator?

As much as I wish Arnold Schwarzenegger was not our governor, I have to admire his (Chief of Staff's) balls in issuing the following veto message to the California Assembly today:


Check out the first letters of lines 3 through 7.

OH!

This hilarity notwithstanding, my problem with the Governator remains: I don't like his schtick, but, at the same time, I can't stop occasionally falling for his schtick, as I might an old flame--which doubly irritates me because it highlights an obvious weakness of mine.

But, I mean, come on--can you blame me? How can you not smile at this Duke of Dweebs?


_

The Pentagon Works in Mysterious Ways

I remember hearing about this back when I was in short-pants, but it still struck me the second time around, so I will share:

In 2003, [The Battle of Algiers] again made the news after the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at The Pentagon offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq. A flyer for the screening read:

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."

According to the Defense Department official (Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict) in charge of the screening, "Showing the film offers historical insight into the conduct of French operations in Algeria, and was intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the French."

The 2003 screening lent new currency to the film, coming only months after U.S. President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 "Mission Accomplished" speech proclaiming the end of "major hostilities" in Iraq. Opponents of President Bush cited the Pentagon screening as proof of a growing concern within the Defense Department about the growth of an Iraqi insurgency belying Bush's triumphalism.

Huh. Oddly, I commend the honesty of the D.O.D. for acknowledging the quagmire that is Iraq, as well as for being concerned enough to consider playing a movie--all after being there for a little over a month.

And yet, it's hard to shake the fact that this should have already been common knowledge that prevented the war--if we're really baring our souls here, and I think we are--but...is showing a mere movie really the way to drill this point into the minds of the military might? I would have a propensity for wisdom, open ears, an open mind, and a good education. Then again, educated soldiers tend to avoid war...

Hey, but what do I know? Maybe it is. I mean, who are the soldiers?

Let's get to know them:

The soldiers are a lovable and sacrificial lot, dusted with sand, wise beyond their years, and cleverly sliced out of the lower and lower-middle classes. Whether they are like you or not, they are the real everyman. They are the guys who go to see Another Scary Movie, the guys who go to see Next Next Friday, the guys who watch King of Queens and laugh.

Huh. Maybe movies are a good way to subtly teach them something, you know--while they think they're just being entertained by clowns during a reprieve from the grind. Except that The Battle of Tangiers is in black and white with subtitles! DOH! wtf?


So nobody watched it. Nobody learned anything! Or is that what the Iraq Veterans Against the War are all about?

Whatever the case may be, one thing is certain:

I want my business card to reflect that I am employed by the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict.



*****

Bonus Round:

Do you like Statistics? I do! I do! Check this shit out:

Troops in Iraq - Total 130,000 U.S. troops as of August 31, 2009. All other nations have withdrawn their troops.

U.S. Troop Casualties - 4,345 US troops; 98% male. 91% non-officers; 82% active duty, 11% National Guard; 74% Caucasian, 9% African-American, 11% Latino. 19% killed by non-hostile causes. 54% of US casualties were under 25 years old. 72% were from the US Army.

Iraqi Physicians Before 2003 Invasion - 34,000

Iraqi Physicians Who Have Left Iraq Since 2005 Invasion - 12,000

Iraqi Physicians Murdered Since 2003 Invasion - 2,000

Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 1 to 2 hours, per Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Per Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2007)

(statistics courtesy of usliberals.about.com)

_

Sometimes when I'm really thirsty, I delightfully stumble upon a 7-11 and Gatorade that thirst to death.

Sometime life just works out that way, you know? Happy accidents.

Similarly, despite what those crazy leftists may believe, the U.S. military-industrial complex does not waste countless man-hours tending their various user-updatable wikipedia entries, in order to make war look temptingly awesome.

It's just a happy accident:

(to read more, click here)

I mean, could they make war look more like a totally sweet video game?
I'm in. America...fuck yeah!

_

There Truly IS a Museum for Everything!

Behold--The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.

If it isn't worth the drive to Big Rapids, Michigan, perhaps an audience with the Ferris State University Homecoming King and Queen is more your speed?

Too much

_

Math Scores in the Shitter

"U.S. Math Tests Find Scant Gains Across New York"

The New York Times is reporting that scores across New York State--on one of the easiest math tests ever--indicate no improvement in what were already low math scores.

Goddamn Wall Street always has to bring down the little guys.

OHH!!!!!!

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The Question About Obama

Is he America's Carcetti or is he worth a damn?

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Thought of the Day:

You know things are bad when your dreams about time machines focus only on the past.

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How Do You Know When Things Are Better?

When corporations spend millions of dollars to tell you they are.

Who cares that you're 45 years old, living in the basement of your demented parents' foreclosed home in an abandoned subdivision threatened by a hurricane? Who cares that you eat oatmeal and stale crackers three times a day? Everybody still employed by GE had a smile on their face in that commercial where they told you everything is better now!!!! Lighten up!!!!! Get out there and buy something fun--like medicine for your bronchitis--with that unemployment check that never came! LOL!!!

Wipe that bloody drool off your chin, shattered human! Bank of America paid a lot of money to BBDO and the television networks so that they could tell you everything is okay. Who cares that they don't loan out money anymore, continue to speculate against you on the stock market, and now buy and sell securitized life insurance policies, gambling against their golf buddies in the health care industry.

Wait, what was that? Say that part again?

Wall Street investment banks are planning to buy and securitize life insurance policies of older Americans. A $1 million policy might be sold for $400,000, then bundled with other policies and sold to investors, the New York Times reports.

Duke law professor James Cox calls the development “bittersweet.”

“The sweet part is there are investors interested in exotic products created by underwriters who make large fees and rating agencies who then get paid to confer ratings," he told the Times. "The bitter part is it’s a return to the good old days."

The story says the plan could be good for Wall Street but bad for insurers, which set rates based on the assumption that policyholders will let their life insurance lapse before they die. If the policies are bought and securitized, insurers may lose money and pass on the loss in the form of increased premiums.

(courtesy ABA Journal)

Wait--what does that mean, exactly?

Well, [Wall Street's] new plan is to buy life insurance plans from elderly and sick people for cash. The example that the New York Times gives is someone selling a million dollar policy for a $400,000 payout, but the payout amount would all depend on the seller's life expectancy. These "life settlements" would then be bundled together to form bonds that can be sold to investors. The investors would start paying for the person's policy from then on. When the person dies, the investors collect on the policy.

Apparently, the faster the person dies, the more money the investors make. However, regardless of whether you die sooner or later, Wall Street firms will profit off of fees collected from creating the bonds and facilitating transactions. You could say that Wall Street is planning to "securitize" people's lives (or deaths, as it may be) into a kind of CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation). And we all know how great that whole CDO adventure played out for Wall Street, right? What could be dangerous about creating a similar class of financial products with sick people's life expectancy as the focus?

(courtesy CBFE Economics)

Wow--things really are better! Now Wall Street is betting everything on the health care industry stealing so much of your parents' money that they have to sell their life insurance benefits right before they die.

It's like these guys are just begging to be called out on this, daring somebody to say something, to do something--like a serial killer leaving clues at the scene of the crime.


But the funniest part of all this hubbub (aside from all the other hilarious stuff I've thus far mentioned) is that these companies didn't think they could rely on you knowing that things are better because your life was actually better. I mean, are they going to start hanging out around my dinner table so I know when my food tastes good?

Just try to wipe this fucking beatific smile off my face, reality! I'm a paid actor in a television commercial and I am damn good at my job!

"CUT!"

And now, back to frowning reality...

_

Sweet Justice?

Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It has only made $8 million since October 2. It cost $15 million to make, plus who know how much to market ($30 million?). That shit's gotta be hurtin' somebody right now--somebody who deserves a big fat spanking in the wallet, if you ask me.

Not that Drew's sweating it, though--because she knows knowledge is power, as well as two other things:

1. She'll make money on the deal no matter what, and the fact that the movie was even released is, sadly, a solid-gold testament to her skill as a director in today's Hollywood.

2. Every trapped suburban housewife/mother/daughter will ultimately suggest to her horny husband/father that they should rent it because she "heard it was pretty good"--and he will acquiesce because there are girls in it and there might be a locker room scene.

The problem is, as much as I'd like to laugh and soak up her failure like a glorious mountain sunset after a day of taming the slopes, I can't. Drew's right--when the dust finally settles, this will have no negative effect on her career.

Justice is such an elusive minx.

_

Rush Limbaugh as Speaker of the House?

Rush + Lindsay. Words cannot express...

Hahahahahahahahaha. It could happen:

The House of Representatives elects the Speaker of the House. Whoever receives a simple majority of the votes is elected and, after election, is sworn in by the Dean of the House, the chamber's longest-serving member. There is no requirement in the Constitution that the speaker must also be a current member of the House of Representatives to serve as speaker; however, every speaker elected has also been an elected representative.

(courtesy wikipedia.org)

Wait a minute--the Speaker doesn't even have to be a member of the House? The second warm body in line for the presidency doesn't need to be elected by the people?

So, in practical terms, if the Dark Side parlays Obama's gross inaction and Nancy Pelosi's appalling inefficacy into a 2010 simple majority in the House, they could presumably chose GOP ponyboy Rush Limbaugh to formally set the Republican Congress' agenda for the entire second half of Obama's first term? The half where we hope he is maybe actually going to start doing things?

Uh-oh.

Now, I'm not saying those immoral, philandering windbags would have the guts, the profound lack of intelligence, or the willingness to selflessly step out of line, but let's not forget these are the same fascinating people that plucked Sarah Palin from deserved obscurity.

In related news, check out this photograph of one of the most famous Speakers of the House, Henry Clay:


Wow.

Get outta my nightmares, Lon Chaney!

_

Advertising, Like Most Things, Used to Be So Much Easier

• In the 1930s, Alex Osborn, with BBDO, made them an ad campaign, in which was included the following slogan: "The season's best."
• The 1940s featured a magazine advertising campaign with actress Lizabeth Scott as the face, next to the slogan "RC tastes best, says Lizabeth Scott".
• In the 1960s, Royal Crown Cola did an ad campaign featuring two birds, made by Jim Henson
  
• Nancy Sinatra was featured in two Royal Crown Cola commercials in her one hour special called "Movin' with Nancy" featuring various singers in November 1967. She sang "it's a mad, mad, mad Cola... RC the one with the mad, mad taste!...RC! "
• Royal Crown was the official sponsor of New York Mets during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. A television commercial in the New York area featured Tom Seaver, New York Mets pitcher, and his wife, Nancy, dancing on top of a dugout at Shea Stadium and singing about RC Cola... "the mad, mad, mad, mad Cola! RC, the one with the mad, mad taste! RC, RC, RC, RC...." (Commercial fades out).
• In the mid 1970s, Royal Crown ran an advertising campaign called "Me & My RC", the most famous of which featured actress Sharon Stone delivering pizza on a skateboard. Others featured people in a variety of scenic outdoor locations. The jingle, sung by Louise Mandrell, went "Me and my RC! Me and my RC!..What's good enough for anyone else, ain't good enough for me."
• RC was introduced to Israel in 1995 with the slogan "RC: Just like in America!"

(courtesy wikipedia.org)

What happened? Now it's all that complicated shit, like "Drink Coke." I yearn for the simpler times, when doctors prescribed cigarettes, wars made sense, and no meant yes.

_

Ah, the Dulcet Sounds of a Whining Loser...

The irritatingly out-of-touch, pandering schmucks behind network television series are up in arms over what they feel is unfair treatment:

Cable shows are winning all the Emmys!

Although they admit the cable shows are better, these overpaid network whingers, who are increasingly and unnervingly incapable of selecting shows they like for more than ten episodes, are of the opinion that network and cable shows shouldn't be judged the same way because they are "apples and oranges" due to the fact that cable shows don't have to create as many episodes as network series 'have to' and their busier schedule allows them less time to focus on their stories and results in their TV shows sucking and getting canceled.

Specifically:

“David Chase in his time off could conceive and write a full season of ‘The Sopranos...We can’t go about our business that way,” Ms. Jacobs noted. “As soon as we finish shooting one season in May, we have to start talking about the new season and get ready to start writing.” In addition to the production schedules cable shows sometimes make use of swearing and nudity, elements that create publicity but are generally not available to network series.

Wait a minute--swearing and nudity are being used by cable shows to create publicity? That's news to me--I thought they were being used to make television shows more realistic since, to paraphrase Boogie Nights' Jack Horner: "There's swearing and nudity in life, baby." If they also happen to make watching these shows more enjoyable for more perverted reasons, so be it, but Mad Men and Breaking Bad--the two best and most-lauded shows on television, airing on AMC--do not have any more nudity than your average network show.

Interesting the network representatives failed to bring up the fact that the cable shows of which they are jealous are all dramas with fabulous character development that keeps you guessing as to who is bad, who is good, and why, while network dramas still rely on the outdated, easy-to-follow-while-reading-the-paper 'good guys are in the army, bad guys are terrorists' model.


As for comedies, the networks seem to forget they have perennial hardware collector 30 Rock in their stable, although the only reason that show wins so many awards is that there is no real competition; I would argue there haven't been any good cable comedies since the British Office aired on BBC America, save perhaps Always Sunny in Philadelphia, on FX, but I haven't seen enough of it to know for sure. Neither, apparently, has anybody else. Most network comedies are virtually plotless 22-minute episodes of predictable and tired one-liners, parroted out by stock actors playing tired stereotypes that never develop as characters.

Case study in brief: British Office vs. American Office

The British one is one hour long, awesomely funny, rings true, featured heart-rending and hilarious character arcs, and never outstayed its welcome--only 14 episodes were ever made. It was so good that it won an Emmy for Best Comedy Series while broadcast on cable channel BBC America, a channel just about nobody watches.

The American version has so far aired 101 episodes, at least 14 of which focused on how (un)funny it is that Dwight lives on a farm. Like 30 Rock, it occasionally pulls down an award due to the dearth of worthy challengers, but it does occasionally hit the right note and makes me laugh. Sadly, though, it is more often boring, predictable, and stunted due to its 22 minute length. How long do they expect us to laugh at the same characters doing the same things? Why does a show need to go on until everybody hates it? Why can't they exit gracefully, like Gervais & Co. always do?

The bottom line is that people watch cable shows on TV and DVD because...wait for it...THEY ARE REALLY GOOD.

The networks like to bitch and moan about the fact that their audience numbers are higher per episode than any cable show, as if quantity warrants an award for quality--should the Best Picture Oscar go to Transformers 3 this year? Let me hear ya say, "No!"--but this is not only little more than a sneaky way to hint that there is some kind of intellectual snobbery going on, teabagger-style, but also misleading. They conveniently forget to consider how many people watch cable shows on DVD, even years after they aired (is anybody renting back seasons of King of Queens at your local Blockbuster? Thought not.).

Since I don't have access to detailed DVD sales/rental stats, let me instead give you a rough estimate: way more people have watched Mad Men on DVD than have watched any network show on the air this past season. Way more. That is why there is so much press about it, so many people are buzzing about it, so many awards are thrown at it--everybody is watching it at some point and everybody is loving it.

By the same token, Arrested Development was a huge hit among the same people who love Sopranos and Mad Men. Unfortunately, it aired on a network and when not enough people watch a show on-air, they pull the plug no matter what. In a rare move, the only reason it was brought back for a third season was because of surprisingly impressive sales of DVDs. Rather than taking advantage of this popularity, maybe by negotiating a bigger cut of DVD revenue to offset underwhelming ad revenue, they pulled the plug on the show mid-season when the broadcast numbers weren't where they would have liked them.

They replaced it with a string of awful shows that attracted even fewer viewers and refused to let the creators take the show to a different network, not wanting to be made to look like idiots if it matured into the next Seinfeld (which took quite awhile, and a lot of patience, to develop into a hit) and won multiple Emmys. Ah, the network way is glorious.

Good job, geniuses--abort what was easily your best show since the Simpsons and then bitch when other channels leave their fantastic shows on the air, start up new ones, and rack up the Emmys, advertising revenue, licensing revenue, and DVD revenue--all by spending less money per episode than the networks do.

Here's a good suggestion that I hope they take me up on, since the networks seem to need my help desperately:

If, by their own admission, a shorter season results in better storytelling, which attracts better writers, and results in shows that people actually like, can't this be turned into a profitable revelation? Can't the networks--who, one would assume 'control their own destiny'--simply...change their schedules? Can't they turn their existing and future series into 13-episode seasons and create enough of them to run for a year on their one measly channel, filling any gaps with reruns that will actually be watched because they will actually be good?

It's not like their current tactics are that successful; as it stands, they cancel many new shows after only 6-10 episodes and immediately give the time slot to a mid-season replacement. Instead of trying to write one shitty 26-episode season of a show, then changing their mind midway through because "the ratings aren't there," why not just make both shows anyway, each with a shorter 13-episode season, and see what happens?


It ain't rocket science, assholes--it's entertainment. Stop trying to find or recreate some magical formula--make good television, however the fuck you need to do it, whoever else you need to pay to do it, and put it on the air in shorter, higher-quality seasons.

Now quit your bitching or I'll stuff a dirty sock down your throat while swearing at you and showing my butt, on one of those sexy cable channels that are so popular these days for some reason...

_