Topic: TV Show intros

Sometimes a show is so complete that even its title sequence works with the rest of the piece, for example Lost's sequence is genius; a white word on black comes at you, out of focus. It comes into focus and reveals itself to be 'Lost' but only for a brief moment before it is too close to be read and out of focus again. Brilliant--that's the show in a nutshell.

However some shows just have deplorable credit rolls int he front that are just worthless and as you continue watching the show become more and more aggravating. But before we get into a list let's talk about a related issue.

Attention Premium Channel shows: Cut it the fuck out with the Production Design on PCP with the credit sequences. When Premium channel shows got popular enough that the mouth breathers started to stop watching Friends and start checking out what HBO and like had to say one of the things they saw were cool credits int he beginning that were animated real well. Six Feet Under, Carnival, et al. They had break animation and cool music and were so different from the stuff the networks did. However then it seemed to be a rule that every show put out on cable had to have a 15 minute long title sequence. It got to the point that I just fast forwarded most of them (thank you On demand). I remember the show where this first really started bothering me: Huff.
Huff's sequence seemed forced; it had nothing to do with anything; and it broke the cardinal rule of good content: it was visual for visual sake. This should have tipped me off on the show which I sort of like until the back section of the first season where this show was jsut trying to see how obnoxiously depressing they could get (Rescue Me did this too, and it was just fucking dumb--oh let's see which kid of Leary's we can kill this season! Fuck you).
Enough man we know that you can use computers to make stuff look cool--but that's not the point. The point is to boost the content.

Now let's talk about some terrible sequences. First on my mind is the L Word, the show once had a nice minimalist sequence where various L words were displayed and then BANG!
TITLE
CREATED BY
SHOW
Then it changed its sequence --around the same time the show turned to shit.
Now its this stupid drop frame thing of the various characters doing various rich lady shit, like go to galleries and swim in your pools. All to just the worse fucking band ever. I know you're suppose to be a show by lesbians for lesbians about lesbians--but fuck this dyke rock band is just sucking my soul out. Just the most grooveless take on 60s pop (i guess) song by your music teacher. I mean she can sing but like i don't want to listen to her. You know who I'm talking about right? Like they can physically sing but they have no hook to their voice that makes you want to hear them sing. It's just an aural abortion over the dumbest attempt at grabbing someone's attention. Sort of like the show.

The 4400. This show seemed interesting and then I realized it wasn't. The show's pilot was great because they had a very minimal shot of the earth with the title over it. GREAT. But as soon as they got picked up they made it this whole long, convoluted thing that has nothing to do with the show and just forces me to not pay attention to the screen. Again the song is just dumb. It doesn't keep with the rest of the program in anyway. I mean a show like this should just have a score, something epic and eerie--like the show. The whole thing has a score and a look and then during the opening credits they play adult contemporary? Really?

Enterprise. Star Trek has a long history of having iconic opening credits. Then with Enterprise they said to themselves, "OK let's make a cool visual sequence showing the various enterprises over history and into the time period of our show. Should we use music that alludes to the other Star Trek shows (like everyone's done). No, fuck that noise; I want shitty soft rock song by some cracker who does the music for mortgage brokerage commercials. Yeah no one will be offended by this. AND NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR IT EITHER, that's probably why your shit was canceled, that and you were on the UPN.

Firefly. Ok I'm a fan of the show so don't throw stones at me. This sow is flawless except for the pening credits. I know its suppose to be a Western/Sci-fi show,a nd that joss whedon wrote the song and the guy who sang is supposed to be someone rad--but that shit is gay as hell. Just because you can write a great script doesn't mean you k now who to write a song that doesn't make me want to puke blood until it's over. I've atched this show countless times, but I can tell you exaclty how many times I watched the title sequence: Twice. The first time I watched it and when an episode was shown in class. Every other time, skipped so furiously the remote was shattered into subatomic particles thus momentarily throwing quantum physics through a loop. Fuck this is terrible, got my blah and shoody doo...fucking stop its embarassing. What doesn't make sense to me was that the score was so full of emotion that scenes of battle where we were in space an thus had no sound, almsot broguht a tear to my eye. And yet they went with THAT FUCKING SONG. No wonder why you got cancelled, if all I knew about the show was what Fox told me (i.e. nothing) and I heard that diddy I'd change the channel faster than you can say shiny.

I'm starting to drool a bit so I need to compose my self and wrap it up.

In conclusion: Lost-->good; Torchwood-->good. L word-->bad.

Sometimes not overstating yourself is a good thing, oh wait thats all the time.

Hope

The Democratic Primary of the Millenium continues as the News Entertainment people salivate over the poll data from states that we all try to forget like Wyoming and Mississippi--where despite the Homosexual road dragging and hundreds of years of deep bigotry Obama is coming out on top.

I don't know if I've said it here before but I am an Obama man--much like most people my age. I could go on about how Hilary is entirely bought by lobbyists, how Obama has some how charged the zeitgeist of a generation that views elections as something decided by the richest 1% or how rad it'd hearing people say "Here now is President of the United States of America Barrack Obama." Instead I use the topic that Obama himself has created as a sort of sound byte for the Media whores but as well as a call to arms for us, the powerless: Hope.

My neighborhood in West Philly is a place where people live broken lives of no meaning. generations upon generations leech off of family members that should be deep into their retirement; Kids don't go to school 'cause its cooler to be a gang banger; Attitudes toward different races are equivalent to living in South Carolina; and where drugs flow more freely than words with more than two syllables. To me this would be the last place anyone would give a shit about politics, let alone a presidential primary.

Yet i see Obama '08 signs int he windows of barber shops and section 8 apartments. I see black men with long beards going door to door for Obama trying to bolster support from a people that everyone in this country has forgotten or just don't give a shit about.

I know all the boomers are gay for Hilary and think she's gonna be able to manipulate the system to get what she needs (read: get the people who bought her to do stuff for her and then do stuff for them 'cause they own her), but in a election year where the theme is change perhaps we should look at actual change versus a different name.

If a black man with name that make shim sound like he should be part of those America's most wanted trading cards, is inning deep southern states, creepy backwards western states and Vermont--that means something.

If this man is getting a generation who came to political maturation during a period where elections were bought and sold; the GOP barred those the didn't think like them from voting: one of the worst presidencies in American history; and complacency and apathy at an all time high. to be excited about how there next president could be rather than pick from two nearly indistinguishable rich, white, middle aged men--that's real change.

Getting urban black people who are now two three generations into crack and urban decay, who've been left behind by their country and who can only look to their grandparents and great grandparents for positive role models to vote--that's real change.

Getting people from countries that have hated our guts for the better part of a decade, become interested in us again if we elect this man--that's real change.

Getting any of us to think that the future might be better and not more of a shit sandwich after 8 years of our country plummeting and becoming more ignorant and backwards--that's real change.

Getting to people who have polarized political beliefs to agree on a hate for Whitehouse insiders and have interest int he same man--that's real change.

So now matter how close Hilary is in delegates and how much people still like her, I think that Obama not being given the nomination would do irreparable damage to the hope this country has to the hope of the people politics has become a bane to.

I've Been Away Far too long

I don't have much to say, I'll try to rite more things in here. I know nobody reads this anymore, but I don't ant some of things written in here to disappear.

One thought, in my political life I've won rarely. I've spent my whole life living in a country that performed almost in exact opposite of what it could be. Could Obama (if he were to wind) turn the tide on this feel of constantly beaten? Maybe we are so jaded that we almost encourage or back those that feed into this cynicism the most (e.g. Bush jr.) Maybe if we start voting for the people we want and encourage what this place would be--it would start to remind us of that place we have in our head.

It's been awhile

Wow, the last post as in July. My life was totally different back them it feels. My life has sorta hit by shitty events almost continually since August. But that's not all why I stopped posting, mostly it was that I couldn't remember my password. That said I want to take you on a journey through time and space.

This is THE MIGHTY BOOSH, a Channel 4 show that is just so out there that there is nothing to compare it to.

I'm Old Gregg!



They used to have the whole episode on youtube, but I guess the end of it got taken down.

The Internet

With the current big stories of Film and Music Piracy and the universally despised net neutrality, I realized something very different and groundbreaking: The Internet is The Revolution.

While this century has seen tot he slow demise of Communism, Lenin's vision of a International Marxist Revolution was tainted early by their misguided decision to use a tyrannical form of government to buttress a Socialist Economy. In a time of nearly Global Capitalism and free market the foundations of the Revolution have been cemented by everyone's favorite source of pornography and home videos of people being hit in the crotch: The Internet.

See, at its very core The Internet is a socialist construct: a global meeting ground where information is a more valuable currency than...well currency. In the beginning maelstrom of proposed prosperity--the dot com boom--businessman across the world sought to use the technology to be able to reach a huge market, or maybe the entire market. All of these companies failed, except for a few heavy hitters like amazon.com. However one company not only survived but became a monolithic business and a buzz world all at once: Google.

Essentially, google exchanges information, you search for information on their engine and then those that have information can be found, easily, on it. Though the site is funded by ad space by other companies and Google's own ventures, it is still much like an information desk at the front of the world meeting ground of the Internet.

Now on a smaller, and illegal scale, you have an even more socialistic prospect of person-to-person actions. Between messageboards and music blogs I've gotten 99% of my music from someone else sharing it with me. I've discovered lists of bands and genres I would have never even heard of in a tradition music market. In turn I have shared this music with others and by word of mouth bands that 10 years ago would have been known by an elite music snob handful, can now enjoy fans from all over the world, who are willing to buy things from them directly.
What this technology brings us is essentially a chance to go back and forward at the sametime. What I envision is that in a few years kids with little-to-no money will exchange information for information. An 18 year old in Boston and a 27 year old in Osaka will exchange several albums for a movie or two. People will exchange books for paintings, pictures for programs. Bartering will make a massive comeback--as it has already begun.

I became dissapointed in my own time as a child, the space race of the cold war took a major backseat during my tenure on this world, seeing the Nasa budget get pulled further, and further back. In a sense computers created and destroyed Space Travel. Until recently I felt that we may never get to that Start Trek moment where man explores the Universe and expands its knowledge with interaction with other lifeforms. But recently I've reconciderd.

When Human Space Exploration first began Humans were at their most divided and aggressive, the Second World War had just ended and the Cold War was beginning. We were a tribal warring people at the time with far too many problems to fix at home before we went off to see the rest of the Solar System, let alone the Galaxy. But with our concentration on computers, namely on the telecommunication field we have now been able to shrink our world down to a village where a person on one side of our world can instantly talk to one on another. Perhaps it is with the internet that we unite and pacify ourselves. Maybe we needed a taste of the wonder of space, before we went in and fixed ourselves up enough to truly explore it. Many ridicule the idea of the internet of as being the greatest invention of the 20th century (The Refrigerator, Microwave, Air Flight, Air Conditioning and others do hold very good sway) but maybe it was this one invention we needed to force us to grow up, get rid of war and the dollar and unite ourselves as a species and a planet.

Or maybe it is just a great place to get porn.

Yeah I posted Again!

So this weekend was amazing because of an epic Saturday.

I saw the Deftones at the Electric factory and it basically changed my life. For those of you who've never heard of the band here's their myspace page

We parked the car in this back lot that is shielded from view and is all fenced off, this where EVERY DRUG KNOWN TO MAN WAS OFFERED TO US. There were guys with tanks blowing up balloons for kids to whippets, I was offered 8 balls, coke, opium and finally mushrooms before getting into the place. Then the cops would randomly cruise through and everyone would turn around or leave.

I get in and the place has a pretty awesome set up, and some how they made it so that despite being hundreds of people back i felt like I was right up front. Maybe it's been awhile since I've been to a show that wasn't at a church or an elks club. We had awesomely missed the entire opening act that was Fall of Troy and got there just as they were setting up for the Deftones. The stage set up was nuts. First there was this sort of table thing set up in the front for Chino to stand on. Behind the band was a mammoth LED Screen with a minimal amount of pixels that would play disparate clips of pin-up girls, parts of movies and experimental film clips. They had some lights that made a pattern on the wall. A million robot lights that were cool and they had a shit ton of strobes all around the rigging of the stage that were pointed at the audience, on certain notes or crecendoes these would blast the audience.

The thing about the deftones is that:
1. Nothing sounds like them
2. they have one of the widest range of audience of any band I like
3. They don't get anywhere as much recognition as they deserve

To me they seem like a Pink Floyd of my generation, whereas Pink Floyd melded Black American Blues music with Rock n' Roll, the Deftones merge Hip Hop with Alt-Metal and both of them then merge those influences with a heavy amount of experimentation.

It was the best show I've ever been to, and I've seen a lot of shows. But I've never everyone in the place dancing and I've never seen such a wide audience.
Another thing about the deftones is that they have this canyonesque gamut of people who listen tot hem. Black Hi Hop kids, latino cholos, hot girls of many different backgrounds, hardcore/metal kids, trashy rock kids, hippie-ish kids. I go to hardcore and metal shows where everyone looks relatively the same, post-rock might have more of a fluctuation in their audience but for the most part I go to shows where people look like a version of me, here there were totally different people all dance together and having this shared experience.

Quick Update

I'm melting in the Advanced Lab editing my documentary that is essentially a discussion on everything wrong with Modern urban America. I currently Have 4 very rough minutes of scenes slapped together. it's really hard to edit without having done the voice over yet.

I hope this documentary doesn't play too dark, at one point I'm sitting and talking to my friend Lippman on my poarch and I say, "There's your race relations in Philadelphia: it starts with a bomb being dropped and end with no one giving a shit about you. It's almost like you live in occupied land. Like You're neighborhood is your country and the Philadelphia Police Department is the occupying foreign army."

I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew, the subject my just be too wide and the story my never really find it's way.

But, hey, it's what I do and somehow it'll get done in the end.


Here's some retarded videos my friends and I put up on youtube.