Because TV Shouldn't Be Used Just for a Quickie

There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve - A.C. Newman (mp3)
I Lost It - Lucinda Williams (mp3)

People spend more than half their working lives watching television. That has to shape the neural pathways. It creates an impatience for irresolution. -- David Milch, creator of Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and Deadwood

Because fathers can be miserable pieces of shit.

Because faith can't help but trump reason eventually.

Because we sometimes find ourselves doing mindless repetitive things simply because we've been told to.

Because sometimes we trust the wrong people.

Because sometimes the wrong people are right, or correct.

Because love is messy but essential, like caramel.

Because all people have at least a little goodness in them.

Because nobody's perfect.

Because puzzles are fun, but require patience.

Because the best heroes are often aggravatingly flawed.

Because most promises we break, we really intended on keeping.

Because even Sammy Hagar is haunted by the notion of fate and free will.

Because we live together and die alone.

These are just a sampling of the reasons the followers of LOST were so loyal, a reason I loved the show so much and will consider it, for the rest of my life, one of the best TV series of all time.

I'm privy to that David Milch quote thanks to the super-awesome TED talk by Dan Meyer, a talk aimed at addressing what he sees as a tragic flaw in our 21st Century culture, one that has trickled down into our educational system and the mentality of students.

We don't like irresolution. It frustrates, aggravates and bloviates. The reason Law & Order and CSI are so damn popular and have so many damn spin-offs is because every episode is a clean package. You can buy a DVD of any season of these shows, randomly pick out an episode, and be able to follow along with 95% of the plotline without asking a single question. Further, the odds are strong that, at the end of the episode, all loose ends are tied up, and all questions are answered: That dude shot the other dude. Any questions?

LOST was, in a sense, the anti-CSI, a show hell-bent on giving you more questions than answers at the end of an episode.

CSI is a whore, a street-walkin' prostitute. You can go visit her once, or fifty times, and all you need to do is be willing to pay for her. With commercials or whatever. She's available at any time, for any position. She's there to joylessly get you off and then return to the street for her next john.

Most sitcoms? Crack whores who can do things twice as fast for half the price. Seinfeld was, by all accounts, the biggest baddest most incredible crack ho the TV world ever knew. Any episode, at any time, can please untold numbers of people and needs almost no back story or context of any kind. Someone who has never seen a single episode could pop in episode 10 of the fourth season of Seinfeld and still expect to enjoy it.

LOST, on the other hand, was looking for relationships. It wanted to date you, to go steady. And, if you liked LOST and it liked you, it expected you to be devoted, and dedicated. If you missed a date, it was hell on wheels trying to catch up. If you missed two dates, then you were on the verge of breaking up. And the only way to get back in LOST's good graces was to do your homework, make up the lost time, and catch the hell up.

There were a million reasons to dislike LOST, so I'm not trying to tell all you non-LOST people that you're defective. We're not all supposed to want to marry the same people. Viva la difference. But I do believe this: if you only watch shows like CSI, where every episode is its own little Lunchable package, then you're missing out on the most important aspect of the TV genre.

Unlike movies, where an entire story must absolutely be told in the timespan of 90 minutes to three hours, a TV series has time on its side. It can build up multiple plots, develop a multitude of characters who change and mature and grow -- or sometimes devolve -- over time.

If you don't watch at least a few shows like 24 or The Wire or LOST or others requiring a patience with irresolution and a love of development, then why are you watching television at all? Why not just stick with movies?

Our culture, our kids, us. We're all impatient. We want answers. We want simplicity. We want disposable diapers and single-serving snacks.

Fight that shit, and fight it with everything you have.

Find ways to exercise your patience. Jog your memory. Wrestle with your morals and ethics. Aerobicize these parts of your head and heart. Build up those muscles. They'll come in much handier when you're 70 than those damn biceps.

LOST made it fun to talk to friends. It left you with stuff to think about. It made you ask questions, some of which were even really good and important ones. Not many shows give you much to talk about any more. I'll miss it dearly.

Musical Heresy... or Not So Much?

The Bends - Radiohead (mp3)
All I Need - Radiohead (mp3)

One of my longest and closest friends hates pizza. Always has. Although it's generally considered an Italian-inspired dish, I can think of few things more un-American than disliking pizza. In my 36 years, I can't even recall another soul who disliked pizza.

I still love the guy, but who the f*#k doesn't love pizza? What kind of mutant freak who loves any kind of unhealthy food would dare deny his or her tastebuds the culinary orgasm that is pizza??

This is exactly how I feel when I admit to the following: I don't like Radiohead.

Now, there's two responses to this declaration. The first, as signified by my wife, is "Who's Radiohead?" (Yes, that was her actual response.) To the world of folks like my wife, my dislike of Radiohead is no more consequential than my dislike of red velvet cake or Abercrombie & Fitch. But then, my wife isn't very into music in remotely the same way many of my friends are, so her response and those like her are kind of irrelevant in the land of music blogs, no?

The other response, likely offered by most anyone reading this tripe, is directly parallel to the one I get when I tell true music lovers that I love Hanson. They first look to see if I'm kidding, and then, when they realize I'm actually not kidding, that I actually like frakkin' Hanson, they get this look of nauseated confusion, as if everything they once assumed about me was now under suspicion.

I didn't always dislike Radiohead. In fact, they burst into my life like an unexpected supernova.

I purchased The Bends from a store near my house that was going out of business in 1995. I was just out of college and had just been "let go" from my bartending job at the time, so I wasn't exactly rolling in dough. But I needed to get my fix with music, so I just bought seven or eight CDs by bands I'd heard of, hoping I could milk enjoyment from them at massive discount. What a find. That CD is easily one of my five favorite CDs from the '90s.

I even went back several weeks later and purchased Pablo Honey, a damn fine album that didn't have quite the arena rock bombast of their second effort. When OK Computer emerged, I was definitely one of those making his way to the store that first day to see where Thom Yorke & Co. took their brilliance.

Although the critical raves were immediate, OK was a difficult pill for me to swallow. Oh, I learned to enjoy it. I grew to appreciate its brilliance, its ambition, its grasp. But it took patience and work, something anyone who knows my musical preferences will attest doesn't come particularly natural to me.

My patience and work in learning to love OK Computer would end up haunting me.

Kid A and Amnesiac followed. A hoarde of disciples and critics gushed praise, but even the biggest fans I knew kept saying things like, "It takes some getting used to" or "It's not what you'd expect" or "It's very experimental."

For me, the only kind of "very experimental" that generally results in my liking an artist more than before is when the bandmates sat around in the recording booth asking whether or not a song needs more cowbell. When albums from bands I love are described as "very experimental," what that really means is it has a 96% chance of sucking.

But with Kid A, I listened and listened and listened. You learned to enjoy OK Computer, you can learn to enjoy this, I said to myself. But, dammit, I was wrong. I am incapable of learning to love Radiohead v.2.0. After trying on and off for eight years, I can finally admit it.

Radiohead is the James Joyce of the alternative music world. In my very skewed opinion, a novel requiring detailed side study of the author's intentions or hundreds of footnotes ain't much of a novel. It's more of like a study guide with a plot.

Radiohead exists to provide musical "intellectuals" an easy Mason-Dixon line between their kind and the primates in their midst. Those who don't truly love Radiohead are posers, simple as that.

But here's what I can't escape. Here's what is incontrovertibly true: if some no-name band came out with any of these last four Radiohead albums, they would either (a) still be some no-name band you'd never heard of, or (b) the album would never have seen the light of day.

I mean, Patty Griffin, who's gotta be one of the more highly-respected and adored musicians in certain country-folk circles, had one of her albums shelved back when she was still up-and-coming. I've heard over half of it, and it kicks delicious buttock, but the dorks who sell albums didn't see the greatness and shelved it. And refused to give the stuff back to her, because music suits are bastards, which is precisely why lots of people don't feel so bad about kicking their financial teeth in when it comes to downloading music.

But back to my point, which is that her shelved album was pretty darn good, but it never saw daylight. If she'd somehow tried to release Amnesiac, it would never have seen daylight, either. No way. No chance. Kid A is a Richard Bachman book that Stephen King burned rather than publish.

I've spent the last three nights fiddling on this computer and playing my entire Radiohead collection -- everything but Hail to the Chief -- on random. All this did was serve to confirm that there ain't a single song on the last three other albums containing anything that holds a candle to their work on the first three.

Radiohead is a Tootsie Roll Pop, and I'm sick of licking and believing there's any candy goodness somewhere deep inside.

Wow. I feel better now. I've held that in for a long time. I'm probably out of the club now. I'm prolly blackballed from all the cool people music parties from here forward.

"The Bends" is off Radiohead's second album of the same name. "All I Need" is off their latest, In Rainbows, now available just like all other albums, proving that their little download ploy was more marketing trick than attempt to revolutionize an industry.

The Waiting (or "The 44")

Tom Petty--"The Waiting (live)" (mp3)
Pretenders--"Mystery Achievement" (mp3)

Right now, sitting in the cupboard pantry that runs down my basement stairs, waits "The 44." The 44 is a homemade liqueur based on a traditional drink in Madagascar. You take a large orange, punch 44 holes in it with a sharp knife, insert a coffee bean into each of the 44 holes, add the orange to a glass canister containing a liter of light rum and 44 teaspoons of sugar, and store in a dark place for 44 days.

The symbolism of the number 44 did not make its way to me, just the recipe. I doubt that I'll even drink the stuff (I'm not much of a hard liquor guy), though they say it's pretty good over ice. Place your order now if you want some.

(UPDATE: I tried "The 44" Friday night, after 42 days, and it kicks ass, or at least mine.)

What I have enjoyed about "The 44" is the waiting. Of course, I had read about how sweet it would be chilled straight up or on the rocks, how it could be mixed with sparkling wine to make a real cocktail, how the coffee taste would hit first and then the orange aftertaste would linger on the tongue. But all of those things could prove to be untrue (they are true!). I have made any number of things that, followed to the letter, didn't yield the pleasures that they were supposed to--love, corned beef, reservations at Brennan's. Yeah, yeah, I know the waiting is the hardest part, as my own posted song reminds me over and over. But I like the waiting. I like the idea that I have to put something up on a shelf and not get into it for awhile, while I always know that it's there and that some point down the road, I'll experience it.

Maybe it's because I bake bread. Once you start that endeavor, you learn quickly that the longer you stretch out each phase, the more flavor and complexity your loaf will have. So you ignore the advice to proof the yeast in very warm water, to let the dough rise in a warm place. Instead, you put the dough in the refrigerator, let it rise overnight, punch the dough down and let it expand three times instead of just two. Bread nutured and baked over the course of several days tastes as noble as the old world itself. And that's a good thing. People who want quickly-made bread deserve it.

It's an irony of life: as you get older, you should, arguably, be more in a hurry to make things happen. But you aren't. You're more likely to let them take their own time. Over Spring Break, I was driving a car that overheated if it was driven too long at too high a speed. Since I had to drive from New Orleans to Tampa, I lamented the fact that I would have to slow way, way down. But you know what? Once I settled into that lower speed, the trip became one of the most pleasurable that I have driven in a long time. No rush, no pressure, no stupid drivng decisions. The traffic roared past me, but I took my time because I had to. It took me a much longer time to get below Tampa, but the wait was worth it. I actually stopped and got the free sample of OJ at the tourist trap.

Waiting, letting things take their time, in this very, very fast world is an odd kind of luxury. It has become, simultaneously, both retro and the latest trend. There's even an international food movement that embraces the notion of slow food. They argue that food should be "good, clean, and fair," and if you explore their connotation of those adjectives, you realize that they are talking about growing and creating food that takes time. Anything that is handmade, made in small batches, constructed to order, microbrewed, grass-fed is taking that same approach.

So when I talk about waiting, I realize that what I'm really talking about is putting in an effort--to cultivate, to nurture, to oversee, to maintain, to protect, to repair --over a long period of time. And don't all of the best things, from relationships to wine, require that?

People often talk about what it will take to get from point A to point B in a linear representation of a problem or situation, but what they're really asking for is the quickest possible solution. In fact, the line between those two labeled points contains an uncountable number of other stops. If you think about it, that's where the life is, in the Big Waiting between point A and point B. Waiting reminds you both of where you are right now and where you can be in the future. Too deep? Make " The 44" and drink up. It's worth the wait.

"The Waiting" is from Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's live CD, Pack Up The Plantation. "Mystery Achievement," arguably the best song on one of the best rock albums ever, is from the Pretender's first. Both are available from Itunes.