This is by no means a complete list, not at all. It is, in fact, an extremely rushed list. And may actually be a really terrible retrospective, at least in terms of showing what we did best, when we did our best, but oh well.
It’s just a few of my favorites. I would invite you to explore further, if you get the chance.
I could not be more excited about Armando Iannucci’s new HBO series, Veep, which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Well, I feel like “could not be more excited” might be inaccurate, so let that instead something along the lines of: This is something I need in my life right now. Also, the world/the country might need it in their lives as well. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus too, because her career deserves to survive the post-Seinfeld curse.
I never saw any of The Thick Of It, unfortunately, but In The Loop was so good, that I’m excited to see the same thing come to America, which was shown to be work just as well in that form, as presented by In The Loop.
In fact, I really hope that Anna My Girl! Chlumsky’s character in Veep is the same character from In The Loop, just a few years later and with a better job, and that the show exists in the same “universe,” because then there’s a good chance for an appearance by Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker.
And also, the timing is right for a show like this in this new post-Sarah Palin world and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and with the primaries, and it being an election year and blah blah blah blah blah. And mainly: It wouldn’t kill us to have some good shows to care about again.
People whose arms were stroked by a robot nurse named Cody felt more comfortable if they believed Cody was cleaning them than if they believed Cody was attempting to comfort them. People who have low serotonin levels underestimate the intimacy shared by couples they do not know. The children of depressed fathers are four times as likely to be spanked, and the brains of depressed mothers are less responsive to the cries of the mothers’ children. Mental illness was going largely untreated among American babies. Test subjects experienced fear when they were given a third, prosthetic arm and researchers threatened that arm with a knife. A connection between violence and happy hour was noted in Wales, where officials planned to move ahead with a badger cull in Pembrokeshire and to rebeaver the countryside near Furnace. In England, Slimbridge scientists surveyed the fatness of swans’ behinds, and doctors treated a three year old for alcoholism. Welsh mountain sheep were deemed capable of following rules. “Sheep have great potential,” said Jenny Morton of Cambridge University. “They’re not as daft as they look.”
Chemists discovered why Van Gogh’s yellows were fading; a Dutch ornithologist remained unsure whether the yellow breasts of great tits change with age but found that the offspring of older females are likelier to die young. In Finland, tawny owls were evolving from gray to brown and sperm quality in humans was deteriorating. Religion was going in extinct in the Czech Republic. A sacred soft-shelled turtle in Hanoi, one of only four species left in the world, was gravely ill yet continued to evade capture. A female mite preserved in amber with her mate was observed to have been controlling the terms of their copulation. Florida could be up to 50 percent older than previously believed. Astrobiologists hypothesized that the first multi-cellular animal resembled cancer. Tonsillectomies make children gain weight. Weight-loss surgery makes children lose weight. Doctors touted the benefits of removing the gallbladder through the vagina. Texas scientists cut holes in the hearts of baby mice; the hearts then healed themselves.
The passages above are from the “Findings” section in the May 2011 issue of Harper’s and were written by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi.
“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.”
“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.”
Since I mentioned it the other day, I’ve been watching a lot of old Seinfeld clips on youtube. And, related to that, I have three random thoughts for you…
1. This video…
…is a roundtable get together from the big box set of the entire Seinfeld series featuring Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richard, and Larry David himself. It’s a pretty fascinating and fun look into the behind the scenes of the show, with the cast and creators going over their successes, their failures, and how hard it was to have that much fun being that great. Related to that…
2. One of the things they go into in that roundtable get together is how hard it was to keep a straight face or to do a lot of the scenes right because of how funny each other was. The biggest offender to this, apparently, was Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
And as much has been said about how great her performance as Elaine Benes was, I still don’t think it was nearly enough. What you always saw onscreen was so trailblazing and yet so understated. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course.
And all that said, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is undoubtedly a beautiful, incredibly talented actress, and one who grown into full MILFitude as she’s aged so wonderfully. And these behind the scenes clips and bloopers are amazing in how infectious her laughter is. It’s an intoxicating thing, all men know, to make a beautiful woman laugh. It’s a rejuvenation on your part, a kind of validation you desperately seek. But even more holy of a grail: Making an incredibly funny woman laugh.
3. Also, I just realized that the guy who correctly guesses “Gonorrhea!” in the episode where Kramer gets the job as an actor acting out symptoms for medical students to practice diagnosing is none other than…
All these years later, you know what show is still perfect?
Seinfeld, man.
Fucking Seinfeld.
For fucking serious.
I could probably watch this show still under just about any circumstances.
Coming home from a funeral, definitely. Probably during the funeral, certainly. During major and brutal dental surgery. During a break up. While I’m being held at gunpoint as thieves are are dismantling and having sex with and then stealing all my worldly possessions. During an exorcism. During a seance. While watching another show. During masturbation, yeah, sure (I can both compartmentalize and multitask)(it’s a gift). During an audit. While blogging. Obviously. Even during sex.
And I’m not saying that I have watched Seinfeld during that last one…
I was out somewhere today and this song, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House, came on…
…and I just stopped and had “a moment.” Not so much an epiphany, not really. Not really a moment of flashback revelatory importance either, though I did briefly ponder all the moments in my life that I’d heard this song, either on the radio somewhere in my youth, or in a movie or a TV show, or what have you. It was on a mix that a friend gave me years and years ago as I was moving away from a place and doing a thing and leaving a lot behind. The friend said, “Track 2. That’s my favorite track.” And track 2 was, of course, for the purposes of this anecdote, this song. Also, it was played in the TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. I remembered that it was covered in the 90s by Sixpence None The Richer (of “Kiss Me” fame), but listening to it, I looked and I searched and I pleaded for an answer, a sign, a glimpse of… something. And what came? Nothing. What lies beyond here? Nothing. Well, probably nothing, but I don’t know. The song sure isn’t answering that question. But it’s just a song. What does it know? Nothing. And just thinking about it reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld, the one where Elaine’s boyfriend is obsessed with “Desperado,” by the Eagles (and the works of Karl Farbman), and he won’t share the song with her. She tries to suggest “Witchy Woman” by the Eagles as something that could be “their song,” but he won’t have it. And so when “Desperado” comes on, and he spaces out listening to it, she starts singing along with it, prompting him to return from that other place and say, “Elaine, would you just shut up for a moment?” That’s how I felt listening to this song today. Well, sort of.
Private little chats, existential crises, pleas to crazy girls, men down wells, leaps of faiths, deals broken off, loyalties betrayed, and baptisms of… water.
And stuff exploded too.
Lots of stuff, in fact.
And all of that on last night’s Lost, entitled “The Last Recruit.” Savor this time, people. Savor it and cherish it. This moment, this building to… to… something, this can only come once, and this is it. And soon, it’ll all be gone…
PLAY The Great Gatsby
The sun unleashed a huge solar flare
