Bryan Joiner

May 24, 2010

I want a new drug

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about television, it’s not to get worked up about a series finale, or to read too much into one. In all but the rarest cases, we follow our television shows like we’re taking a drug, and expect that final, last hit to be the one that validates all the rest of them—to be the one that shows some sort of clarity for our actions, that absolves us for the dozens or hundreds of hours we’ve sat on a couch, staring at a screen, in a life where people outside are interacting with each other. This is, of course, not how drugs work: The returns are always diminishing. You’re always chasing that first hit again. This is, of course, also exactly how drugs work: When you’re chasing it, you don’t realize the futility of your quest, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. You have a delusion that there is supreme clarity at the end of this path simply so that you will allow yourself to follow it, and you do so because it feels good.

There was one series finale that permanently punctured a hole in this delusion, that showed you what this addiction was really worth, and basically smacked across the mouth the people who believe that television “owes” them something: it was that of The Sopranos, the one modern ending to really be all that instructive in terms of understanding how the medium really works. You want answers? Fuck you, David Chase said. Television is not about answers, it’s not about closure, it’s about catnip voyeurism even in the best of cases. Anyone who thought The Sopranos still “owes” them something is missing the gift in front of their face: A way out. Permanently lower your expectations, Chase was saying, because television will never love you the way you love it, and television is never going away. Learn to deal with it, or spend your life being disappointed. Enjoy the ride if you can, but might it be better never to take the ride at all?

I confess to being something of a Lost apologist: the show was not without its flaws, but it created drama out of nothing better than any show I can remember. My favorite example from this season was when Jack destroyed the mirror at the top of the lighthouse and it seemed like this big deal. I was basically shaking when it cut to commercial before I realized that I had known about the mirror for about two minutes before it was destroyed. It felt like a big deal, and maybe it was for Jack’s character arc, but it was something I hadn’t known existed when I had started the evening. Then, I’m sure, the writers went back to some sort of Dogen-themed subplot I couldn’t stand, but I was satisfied. I had my fix for the day.

So then what to say about the logical problems of the finale? I’m not talking about the lack of answers for really anything having to do with the island. I’m grateful for that. I didn’t want some post-facto explanation about what this place “meant,” as if was anything more than a convenient tableau to create drama. I didn’t want answers where they clearly didn’t exist. For example, the Smoke Monster. What and why? We got nothing, and that’s perfect for me. And the island: What was it? Turns out it was an island, and really entirely separate from the ultimate lessons of Lost. That’s fine too. It, like everywhere else in the world, was just a place where things happen.

No, my problem with the finale—in retrospect—is the final scene, where the castaways are all huddled in the multidenominational church in Purgatorytown, waiting to really die, or whatever. I don’t even have a problem with the conceit. What I have a problem with is what Christian Shephard said: The reason that this particular group of people was assembled was that they had spent the most important years of their lives together, despite the fact that several of these people escaped the island. Are we to believe that nothing important enough happened when Kate and Sawyer got back to L.A. (if they did) for the rest of their lives, and that’s why it was this group that their souls had, consciously or not, chosen to meld with to ease everyone’s transition to the afterlife?

And here is where I reconcile my television problem the way some people might reconcile their cocaine problems. I realize that the entire setup was a conceit to get everyone in the same room so that you feel like it’s all been “worth it,” that you can feel good for these characters and about yourself as you both move on… but why am I supposed to be an expert on “TV conceits?” Why should I care? It’s just another way of feeding the addiction. I liked Lost, both as a series and as a finale, but I’m under no illusions about what it was and wasn’t. It was good popcorn fun couched in the world of survival and the language of philosophy. It wasn’t more than that. I might be ready for something different. I might be ready to even heed the lessons of the show: to focus on life as it happens, to spend more time with the people I’m around rather than falling back on the company of a mostly superficial, compelling TV show, and to do everything I can to enjoy the real things in this world before it cuts to black.

UPDATED THOUGHTS: I was wrong to admonish the final scene for being a TV conceit. I thought about them earlier today and came to the same conclusion Jeff Jensen was, in a sideways world somewhere, banging out on a keyboard:

Personally, I don’t think Lost was promoting one faith over another, and I don’t think Lost was sketching an afterlife cosmology. I think the show was offering us an allegory for how life should be lived — with an ongoing effort to understand each other and ourselves; that such a project is best undertaken with a community of people.

I also think, as I wrote in the comments, that the finale was just great.

9 Comments

May 18, 2010

You Don’t Know How it Feels (To Be A Yankees Fan)

Shortly after the Bruins dropped their four consecutive game to the Philadelphia Flyers, losing a 3-0 lead both in the series and in the game, a Twitterer with the handle of JConnole14 dropped a little phrase that was, one presumes, both bitterly and eagerly retweeted by Bill Simmons: “Now I know how it feels like to be a Yankee fan.” It’s a joke that writes itself, and one that urged Bruins fans to laugh rather than cry. You just suffered a devastating, scantly-precedented defeat. Why not make yourself feel better and twist the knife that’s still wedged into the back of the average Yankees fan, six years and their 27th World Championship removed from the darkest moment in their history?

I like the pluck. I like the motivation. I like everything about it except that it’s not true.

Let’s be careful not to equate hyperbolic situations just because it’s easy. The Bruins loss was horrid, and, for diehard followers of the team, must have felt like being hit by a cement mixer careening down Mt. Washington with busted brakes and a razor wire-barbed cowcatcher on the front. The facts are these: the Bruins have a long history of disappointment that was exacerbated by this newest glorious way to express futility in the face of success; it was an infection that got worse. It’s not Aaron Boone-level pain yet only because it’s merely Bucky Dent-level pain or even, at this point, Bill Buckner-level pain. Being the second round of the playoffs, though, maybe Buckner would be a stretch. Still, it sucked.

Now let’s look at revisit what happened to the Yankees. They are the winningest American sports franchise of all-time. They have won about a quarter of all World Series ever contested, and just to piss you off, have lost 13 of them. They were coming off maybe their most satisfying elimination of the persistently, unapologetically losing Red Sox, and had built a three games to none lead in a sport that’s fickle enough that the Sox were the first team to ever even tie it at three games after that, let alone win the series. Beyond that, the Yankees were beaten in back-to-back overly winnable extra inning games by the same batter in the same day; they followed that up by losing to their most willing gum-flapping antagonist who was pitching with a very obviously injured ankle tendon that was bleeding through his sock, and they lost largely due to their new prized acquisition’s illegal, un-“Yankee”-like open-handed slap of an opposing player; and followed that by being blown out of their own building, their only solace being their one-inning, two-run crusade against the Pedro Martinez vanity experiment. The sport was never the same, and the sport will never be the same. Hockey will continue more or less as it should, even if the headache for B’s fans lingers into August. The pain will eventually fade, and in hockey’s anything-goes playoff system, patience will eventually be rewarded.

Yankees fans who are waiting to reverse what happened in 2004 will have to settle for winning 10 World Series in a row, or having A-Rod break the all time hom runs record in their uniform, or having all civil liberties suspended on their new lockdown campus. I suspect if those things happen, they really won’t care about 2004 any more. But I will, and while I’ll know what it’s like to see my favorite hockey team get felled by four swift kicks to the nuts, I’ll still never know what it felt like for Yankees fans to be so humiliated. Don’t let this one go until you absolutely have to. You earned it.

2 Comments

May 11, 2010

“Your girl”

I recently wrote my second email in a week with the subject line of “Your girl.” The construction of these emails is pretty straightforward: I send a link with no text attached, with information contained therein that refers to someone whom the recipient has noted some attraction or non-email-style attachment. The idea is that they don’t necessarily know who I’m talking about until they open the link, and then they think, “Yes, that is my girl!” Or more: “Yes, that is my girl. More than it is anyone else’s. Except in like real life.”

The first one I sent was to an graduate student in creative writing and was a video of Flannery O’Connor at age five featuring a “backward” walking chicken. I was being ironic. My friend loves to hate Flannery because he loves her writing and hates the not-always-undertones of racism radiating therefrom (and in her public statements) that ruin the whole thing for him.

The second one I sent was to a friend who recently met an, I guess, media personality with whom he’s had some digital contact and whom Frank Rich mentioned in his most recent column.

If I had any interesting Keira Knightley news, one of my brothers would get it with that subject heading. If I had intel on Amy Adams, it would go to the other one. (I’m with the second one.)

If Alicia Keys sent me an email by accident, I’d forward it to a college friend who would deny that he loves her half of the time and be really proud of it the other half. You’d never know what you’re going to get.

Likewise, if I got Kristen Stewart’s phone number, I’d probably tuck it into a message to my friend on the west coast, though I’m not sure if she’d really want to hear him drone on about how handsome Eli Manning is.

If I saw Drew Barrymore falling down drunk on the Lower East Side, I’d write up the story with the subject line and send it to another friend who’s had a reliable thing for her for a decade. I would also prepare to argue the appropriateness of the heading, because it could always be coming.

If I “accidentally” watched one of the masterpieces of the multitalented Maria Ozawa and wanted to compare notes, I’d connect with my old roommate, an expert film critic. If you’re tempted to Google that name, I strongly, strongly suggest you don’t do it at work.

If something something Kirsten Dunst, I’d send something to Moacir just to see if he responded angrily just so I could ask him why he was so angry.

If Kyle Farnsworth spontaneously learned how not to give up home runs and was the feature of an SI.com photo gallery, I have a guy friend who I’m pretty sure would toss down some clickthroughs.

If Mariska Hargitay was on my block for a Law & Order shoot—not inconceivable, by the way, they were filming Bored to Death across the street last week—I’d tell a friend a day after it happened just to have him swear at me. Not that I’d need to see Mariska for that to happen.

If I saw Scarlett J. near the Apple Store in SoHo—and I’m pretty sure I did a couple years ago—I’d tell both a far-flung Frownie-faced friend and my trusty local Diceman. For the record, I don’t get it.

If I saw some Romanian or Korean or Togolese movie that starred an actress of obvious talent and sublime and/or understated beauty, I’d mention to a friend that I’d seen his girl while being about 40 percent sure he’d have no idea of whom I was speaking (and in the other 60 percent lies the joke).

If it was Audrey Tautou, though, it would go to the schoolteacher who I’ve known for damn near 20 years, and who we bafflingly realized were each other’s oldest continuously-held close (/proximity) friend over beers on a Sunday afternoon. And then we’d argue for hours over the ideal size and role of government.

If Chris Onstad drew an Achewood comic where Téodor passed out drunk while searching for naked pictures of Meg White, I’d send it to an ex-coworker. Oh wait: he did and I did.

After all this, who’s “my” girl, you might ask?

I suppose that would be up to you.

12 Comments

May 4, 2010

The Key to Writing

It was a slow day at work (more to the point, I’m moving slowly, even if I shouldn’t be) and I hadn’t written here for awhile, so I decided it was probably time for a blog post. And why not one on writing? It’s something I do a lot and probably don’t talk about as much as I should, because it’s probably the subject on which I have the most knowledge to impart. I’m not talking about past participles or present pluperfects, because I couldn’t teach you what those are, nor am I an peanut gallery grammarian (I am vicious with with my own prose, but only insofar as I know mistakes when I see them; I never bothered to learn what most of them are called) I’m talking about the act of writing itself, of putting words together to make sentences, not in theory but in practice.

During the period in my adult life where I was the most preachy about writing—which, perhaps not coincidentally, was the period in my life where I was doing the least of it—I had a phrase that I was ready to repeat to anyone but most often ended up telling my satisfied self: “The key to writing is to write.” I was, I confess, on to something. One cannot become a better writer without doing the hard work of writing every day, the exact same way one cannot become a great runner without running every day, or one (presumably) cannot become a great chef without cooking every day. At the time I was saying it not to describe my habits, but to describe my past ones at the Queens newspaper, where I wrote hundreds of thousands of words that ultimately landed me unemployed by choice, but unemployed nonetheless. I wanted credit for the life I had lived instead of enjoying the life I was living.

I still wrote, and wrote a lot, but without much discipline. My mind would wander from subject to subject, and my output was frighteningly erratic. I could write nothing for months and then write 20,000 words in two weeks. Most of these words went nowhere, and passed before no one’s eyes but my own. My computer is a graveyard of unfinished project after unfinished project. I have taken pains not to erase most of them in the event that, some day, I have the courage to face them and make them into something readable, but that day has not yet arrived.

It turns out that when I said, “The key to writing is to write,” I was only partially correct. There are a lot of other things that help; things that I’ve done virtually all my life, but never as rigorously as I do now in the service of my own work. The first is reading. For a long time I thought that reading was important to writing merely to give the author a platform from which to have an authoritative voice; something of a pile of books to stand on. That is important, but it’s not the only part that is important, nor is it even the critical part. There would be periods of months at a time over the past few years that I wouldn’t read a book at all, because I was satisfied with the amount which I had read. I was underestimating, greatly, the process by which gradually reading one’s way through a book influences one’s ability and inclination to write. I had become the hare and the tortoises were passing me. I have forever rallied against being labeled as a “writer,” because it’s a meaningless, self-applicable title. I wanted to be published first. That led to an unfortunately long neither-chicken-nor-egg scenario for my career, which ultimately righted itself to a degree when I moved to Brooklyn, shut off the TV, and began acting like a professional writer. That meant moving through a book at all times, and putting some words down every day. The important thing for me on the writing side is to keep the restrict0r plates on, so to speak. I stop myself at 750 words, which I’ve already bumped up from 500, in order to maintain my enthusiasm about writing from day to day. As a journalist, I have always been goal-oriented: get the article done, get it edited, get it published. A writer’s job is different: it’s process-oriented, and no amount of guffawing about my past is going to change that.

2 Comments

April 19, 2010

Magnolia

I just watched Magnolia for the first time in a decade, and not only was I not disapppointed, I have far too many good things to say to do it here, and now. But this is from Roger Ebert’s initial review of the film, and I love it:

The film’s opening sequence, narrated by an uncredited Ricky Jay, tells stories of incredible coincidences. One has become a legend of forensic lore; it’s about the man who leaps off a roof and is struck by a fatal shotgun blast as he falls past a window before landing in a net that would have saved his life. The gun was fired by his mother, aiming at his father and missing. She didn’t know the shotgun was loaded; the son had loaded it some weeks earlier, hoping that eventually one of his parents would shoot the other. All allegedly true.

This sequence suggests a Ricky Jay TV special, illustrating weird coincidences. But it is more than simply amusing. It sets up the theme of the film, which shows people earnestly and single-mindedly immersed in their lives, hopes and values, as if their best-laid plans were not vulnerable to the chaotic interruptions of the universe. It’s humbling to learn that existence doesn’t revolve around us; worse to learn it revolves around nothing.

Ebert did a re-analysis of the film of 2008 in which he praised it even further; I suggest you read it if you’re interested in hearing anything good I have to say.

6 Comments

April 16, 2010

An Incredible Fatigue

I’ve suffered from an incredible fatigue recently, one that leads me to start sentences like this with “I’ve suffered from an incredible fatigue” instead of saying “I’ve been really tired.” But I have. Work has taken on a sine-curve like tolerability, and non-work has become cumbersome. I’m typing this from a coffee shop around the corner from my house; I’m desperate for some, any sort of escape. My boss and I had a somewhat contentious but well-spirited discussion today about the process of getting my magazine to print, and it was one of those things where we both found a way to do things better. But the one “hidden cost” of our way of doing business of which she was unaware, or simply not paying attention to, was that in our chasing-the-tail ways (in which stories are assigned by the publishers at the perpetually extended deadline), the Editor in Chief (that’s me) has to plan for the previous deadline and watch it get dragged out like a piece of yarn. I.e., I have to actually be at work, where I’ve been without a vacation or a trip of my choosing for an obscenely long time. I can feel it in my bones, and the methods I use to stop the walls from closing in (exercise, writing, buying shit, drinking) have proven dwindingly effective. Even this coffee shop looks a little smaller than it did last week.

Of course, I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, and involves doing things to get me slightly out of my comfort zone, like getting my ass to the gym for a class instead of just pretending that running three times per week is going to solve everything. It’s odd, though. The weekend has completely inverted itself for me. All I want to do on the weekend now is relax, whereas before I wanted to do stuff. I mean I still want to do stuff, but the most important thing I pay attention to is recovering from the week. I’m not sure I’ve stumbled on a novel concept, but seven years of doing my own version of chasing-the-tail, filling in my own map of NYC and life with shit I’ve wanted to do, constantly pushing back the deadline for calming down, it’s been harder than I’d imagined to do once I got there. It involves a whole set of new routines that I’m constructing out of the ash of the last decade. Yeah, like this. And that stupid link tells me that the Chicago people actually knew what they were talking about, which steams me more than you can imagine. I want to go punch something. I wish there was a boxing class.

1 Comment

April 15, 2010

Maybe I’m Just Tired

But this, from Jeff Jensen’s always excellent Lost recap, seems pretty damn profound:

In life, in art, and on The Island, there is just trial and error, mistakes and fixes, blunders and recoveries… and somehow, someway, something happens, something is produced, something you never intended, but something that never would have happened unless you tried, and the most heroic thing you can do is move into that something when you finally see it — and hope that something will allow you to do so.

April 13, 2010

Rick Reilly Disses Women

I can’t sleep, and that makes me angry. I just ate a microwave burrito I keep around for times like this, so our state of being could change at any moment. But I just read an infuriating Rick Reilly column.

I know, at this point picking on Rick Reilly seems too easy, but I’m just baffled by his unflagging stupidity, and his willful intransigence. Every week, he publishes a self-flaggelating column entitled, “The one email that wasn’t insulting,” as if he bears no responsibility for the vitriol that comes his way. No, you’re not going to please everybody, but you’re especially not going to do it if you don’t try.

Today’s column was called “Mickelson’s win a victory for women,” and posited that the gender that makes up more than 50 percent of the human population “won” something because Phil Mickelson won a golf tournament, the logic being that Tiger was bad to his wife, and Mickelson, whose mother and wife are undergoing cancer treatments, is good to his wife. Thus, women “won” something when he won the Masters, because the image with which we were presented was that of a man who was deeply in love with and devoted to his spouse, and used that as fuel to win a golf tournament.

This is familiar because it is what we were presented with from Tiger Woods for so long. Nevermind the question of whether Phil Mickelson is having affairs (I am not suggesting, nor would I suggest, that he is), the question is, “Is he capable of it?” Well did we learn anything from Tiger or not? Are you going to unblinkingly believe the reality with which you are presented, or are you going to maintain some sort of perspective? Perspective like, I don’t know, remembering that what just happened was a golf tournament at a club that does not admit women members.

For Rick Reilly, the answer is no: He will not maintain this perspective. He is a sportswriter, and thus life must be seen as a morality play that is told through the results of major sporting events. Women won today, but wait until tomorrow’s Twins game. The sickening part is that sports can teach us an amazing amount about life, and we can learn and funnel life lessons through them, but Reilly has the order all backward. He sees the result and draws a conclusion. What he should be doing is observing a phenomenon and finding the root cause. Some women may remember that Phil Mickelson won the Masters next week, but will that get them better-paying jobs? Happier relationships, with better lines of communication? No. It will do nothing for them, because “Phil Mickelson” is just an idea like “Tiger Woods” was, and if you’re building happiness atop a house of cards it’s bound to fall. We can learn to make better choices, and sometimes it’s tempting to take the easy way out and swallow the lines that have been given to us. We don’t need idiots like Rick Reilly to put an exclamation point on them. We need guys like Rick Reilly to tear them down, so we can attain the happiness that he ascribes to Phil Mickelson in our own lives.

April 12, 2010

Conan on TBS

In retrospect, this makes sense. Everyone assumed the FOX thing was alive because it seemed like it should be, but mainly based on some very early, pre-financial assessment anonymous quotes. The other ideas, like a show for the web or bumping the Comedy Central dudes (which was never real talk) were never really substantive, and where does that leave us? Here. TBS has been trying to push itself as funny for a long time, and now they’ve put money behind it.

I think the real reason people are surprised or upset is that this seems to be a letdown for the Conan-as-martyr crowd, who wanted him to raise keep raising hell on the back of the NBC fiasco. But at some point you need to turn the page, and he’s done that today. In fact, I would say it’s smart not to let this play out longer than necessary, before the focus gets put on why Conan was forced out in the first place, and that becomes the narrative. With the tour starting today, everything is in place for him to succeed on some level from here on out. He was never going to beat Letterman or Leno in the ratings, so it seems foolish to sit back and wait for an opportunity for that to happen.

Plus, anything that pushes George Lopez later is fine with me.

Also: We’re number four! Take that, Nate.

1 Comment

April 7, 2010

Glaciers and Dominos

I like people who pronounce “glacier” “glassier,” which means I think I like Europeans. That has nothing to do with the rest of this thought. I’m moving like a glacier this week. I have all sorts of things I need to do — work-work, home-work, taxes, exercise — and I feel like I’m carrying all this stuff with me through the week, a slow-building and slow-moving mass of stuff that I need to excavate like soon. TLB, and specifically the cover of TLB, isn’t going to finish itself. Finishing the cover usually sets up a domino effect with everything else. So maybe it’s time for that glacier to knock over the first domino.

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