1) Swingtown, week 3: I'm still interested enough in this show to keep watching, which almost guarantees it won't be renewed. After Bruce & Susan "swung" once with Tom & Trina, they decided not to do it again, but by this week, Susan has decided they should keep their options open. When Roger, of stodgy Roger & Janet, finds out about the swinging episode, he freaks out and, without saying why, asks Janet to cancel their planned weekend cabin getaway with Bruce & Susan, so Tom & Trina ask themselves along. After an afternoon skinny-dipping event which seems to be a prelude to more uninhibited behavior, Roger & Janet show up and an awkward dinner ensues. Just when total disaster seems inevitable, Trina puts pot in Janet's brownies. Surprisingly, Janet goes ahead and indulges, and soon they're all having a giggly time playing Twister. No mate-swapping occurs, but what I like about this show is the unpredictability of the characters. Janet turns out not to be a total prig, and Trina reveals her fears about being lonely once Tom begins his U.S.-to-Japan piloting job. The teenagers' plotlines remain less interesting to me, but the 70's music is still fun.
2) The Middleman, a new sci-fi/superhero show on ABC Family. The first episode was fun, but I fear its retro-comic book feel will stop it from getting a big audience; as with Swingtown, my interest in the show will certainly kill its future chances. Matt Keeslar (above left) is a "Men in Black" kind of operative, fighting evil for a mysterious agency. He recruits Natalie Morales (above right), a young college grad stuck in a dead end job. The effects are about average for basic cable, but the show has a quirky tone that reminds me of Pushing Daisies, and the humor and the fine deadpan performance of Keeslar are above par and make this worth watching. One reviewer on IMDb criticized "the pace of the delivery of the lines"; it's called "fast-paced," and for me, that's one of the best things about the show.3) Get Smart, at the Multiplex. It was about what I expected based on the reviews. Not as much slapstick humor as I would have liked, though the action sequences were well done without being overdone. There are some nice in-jokes for us baby-boomers who remember the original show (including a last-minute appearance by Hymie, the robot) and each of the show's memorable bits of shtick (the shoe phone, the cone of silence, the "Would you believe..." riffing) get used once, which is enough. A pleasant way to pass a Sunday afternoon.
4) "Let It Blurt," a book about rock critic Lester Bangs, pictured at right. I loved reading Bangs' reviews and articles in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and 70's-era Creem, and the bio, though incredibly well researched, was depressing, as Bangs comes off as a total jerk whose only redeeming quality was his ability to use language in an interesting fashion (I hope no one says that about me some day...). Bangs died at 33, and the author, Jim Derogatis, made this an exhaustive biography; he seems to have used every scrap of every interview he got, including one with Bangs just days before his death (an accidental prescription drug overdose), which makes the book feel awfully long, but I'm glad someone cared enough to put something like this together, even if it took over 20 years.5) "The Silence of the Bees," a PBS Nature documentary about the problem of colony collapse among the honeybees of the world. It was much less repetitive and melodramatic in tone than all that crap on the various "documentary" cable channels (Discovery, History, National Geographic), though once or twice, narrator F. Murray Abraham did threaten to twirl his mustache. Still, thank goodness for PBS.
6) Cloverfield, on HD Movies on Demand. Blair Witch meets Godzilla. If that phrase piques your interest, you'll like it. The opening is dreadfully slow, the middle is grand fun, but once we start actually seeing the monster, the film loses a lot of tension. The effects are quite good, the acting unremarkable.
2 comments:
Hi Michael -- Thanks for reading BLURT, and for sharing your thoughts on it. Sorry to hear you think Lester came off as a jerk, and that the book was, overall, a sad read. I didn't intend to leave either impression (though of course, there is no getting around the sad ending); I wanted to celebrate an extraordinary life, warts and all, just as Lester did himself so many times in that great body of work. It's sort of like a litmus test, though -- some people read it and find a lot of joy and a great human being; some a total jerk and a very sad tale. Maybe it depends on one's mindset at the time (not to cast any aspersions!) In any event, great blog, and again, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the book.
All the best -- Jim DeRo
Perhaps "total jerk" was not quite accurate. It's the "real human behind the celebrity" syndrome, I guess. You made Bangs seem like a very real, relatively average guy, albeit someone I'm not sure I would have gravitated to if I had known him. I have fond memories of his prose which have now been augmented, perhaps even superseded, by the image of him as a somewhat pathetic cough syrup junkie who, it seems, had trouble keeping friends.
Intellectually, I know that people who become famous are not necessarily better or worse than the rest of us, but there is still the element of the "fall from grace" when I find the gap between the appearance and the reality to be so big. I enjoyed your book and would heartily recommend it, even if I will always think of Bangs a little differently than before.
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