Can Television Save US?

Beginning at 8pm every Wednesday night in my college dorm room, no one was allowed to speak. The few unlucky individuals who wandered into our room and made any more than some rustling sounds were shouted down until they shut up. Well, at least we gave them very dirty looks. Like, face-melting dirty.

I love The West Wing not because I'm liberal (though of course I am), but becuase it is so well written. The dialogue fresh and challenging, the characters engaging and funny. And it was so earnest, sometimes inspiring.

Aaron Sorkin, who created and wrote the West Wing for the first four seasons (before it started to be kind of lame), also wrote the play I watched last night at the Alley Theatre, the Farnsworth Invention. The Farnswroth Invention is a great piece of storytelling. I love the way Sorkin pieces the story together, has the characters step in and out of the narrative. It's about the invention of the television, and the fight between media mogul and president of RCA David Sarnoff and inventor Philo Farnsworth over who inveted it. Aaron Sorkin took the stage afterward for a talkback. He said that for him, the play was really about the need for exploration.

He hammered that message home near the end of the play, with David Sarnoff exlacming, "You go to the moon becuase it's what's next."

Yeah, that's nice. But what really stuck with me was the line earlier in the play. Both Sarnoff and Farnsworth believe that television can do great things. Sarnoff says about television, "It will end war...stop war by pointing a camera at it."

There are hints elsewhere that Sorkin believes in the power and possibility of media. His character in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (we can debate the merits of this show elsewhere), Jordan McDeere, president of the fictional National Broadcasting System, gives several semi-inspiring speeches about her network being challenging and engaging and producing real art.

This all seems a little far fetched as I watch Terminator 3 on the ridiculously named channel, American Movie Classics. It was preceded by Catwoman (which I didn't watch). The other night in an effort to find some mindless entertainment I watched Transformers. With Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opening today, it's hard to take the idea that movies and television can make us better seriously. The most popular entertainment is just an excuse to make fun of Michael Bay (you should try it, it's not hard), or fodder for morning talk shows.

I do believe that art matters, and that movies and even television can be art that teaches us and brings us together. We don't really get together much except at the movies, even if so many of them are bad. And there are plenty of good movies out there (I recently saw and loved Doubt, which does nothing if not stimulate conversation). And I believe that pointing our cameras at the worst parts of the world changes the world for the better. Even if we could probably do it better.

Sorkin is now working on a movie about the founding of Facebook. I know, sounds exciting. I imagine scene after scene of college students and twenty somethings updating their status messages. Well, now it would probably be more middle aged women updating their statuses (they are the fastest growing Facebook demographic, which is why you are now Facebook friends with your mom).

But Facebook and Twitter and the internet do hold the same kind of hope. We keep thinking, maybe they can teach us, bring us together, change the world a little by shedding some light on it. And maybe it is. Just think of the Twittering Iranians.

Cheerios

So, I was eating some cheerios for dessert (after a delicious meal of slices of cheese and lunch meat), and I found a toy in my cereal. At first I thought it was some sort of child size bobble head, until I realized it goes on the end of the pencil. Enjoy this random video of the dinosaur bobble head, that apparently doesn't approve of the mess in my room.

This Makes Me Happy

Nevermind that it's an advertisement.

The Lazy Vegetarian

Chili's Smokehouse Bacon Triple-the-Cheese Big Mouth Burger. Say it three times fast. It's a mouthful, in every sense. It's a big burger, and that "extra thick bacon" is more like "thick slices of fried ham." Try eating it after a the Triple dipper Appetizer. It's not easy, but I did it. Cause I like to stuff my stomach full of meat and then complain about how full I am.

I've thought frequently about becoming a vegetarian, but I'm not sure I could give up the occasional hamburger. There is nothing better than a burger when it's past dinner time and you've skipped lunch.

This is, I admit, a stupid reason not to become a vegetarian. "I would do this," I'm saying, "except that it's difficult." Every time I hear Michael Pollan talking about the food industry, I think again about giving up meat. And I have to admit, I find the whole thing kinda sexy. I've always found that there's something alluring about a girl who is vegetarian.

When it comes down to it, I've just been too lazy to give up meat. It's so much trouble finding the right restaurants, requesting the vegetarian meal on the plane, asking your friends to make a vegetarian option when you visit, though I also think that's kind of the point.

Cooking more might solve my problem. Considering how much money I will be making in New York City beginning next month, I'll need to be cooking a little more and eating out a lot less. And cooking meat is too much trouble. How do I know which kind of meat to buy, and then I have to thaw it, and how long do I cook it? It's too easy to give yourself salmonella. So I generally stick with rice and beans, peanut butter and jelly, and cereal. Easy. Relatively ethical, sure, but honestly, I'd be acting once again out of laziness. At least I can feel good about being lazy, though, instead of uncomfortably full.

Liturgical Dance, like it was meant to be done.

Traffic Court

I make sure to sit on the left when I enter the courtroom. Twenty minutes on the pew-like benches, then my name is called. I move to the right side of the courtroom, as instructed. The judge sits high in front of the large train on the city seal. I stutter a little when I ask for defensive driving. I am sent to sit to sit back on the benches to the left, where I stare at chalkboard. Someone has drawn roads and arrows, and taped matchbox cars to the green surface. The clock on the wood paneled walls is missing the two and the six. It has no hands.

Wonderful and Awful

My friend is talking about Mamma Mia, the ABBA movie, just before it opens: “It’s going to be wonderful and awful, all at the same time.”

"Yes, just like life," I say.

“Oh, how sad."

It might be a little sad, that life this a mixture of sadness and pain, joy and beauty; but the best art and writing looks this fact straight in the face, often with a sense of humor. My favorite movies, my favorite books - they are all filled with this mix of highs and lows, moments funny and joyous and painful and sad, all stuffed into a few hours or a few hundred pages. Also like life, the best and the worst sometimes occupy the same page.

Postscript: A few months ago, I did finally see Mamma Mia on a flight from New York to Houston. I tried not to watch, and managed to read for most of the flight from Houston to New York. Continental hates me, however, and they showed the movie again on the way back. Unable to resist the images from the screen hanging above my head, I watched most of the movie on the way back. Unfortunately, it was just awful.

Friday Playlist

What I'm listening to, reading, looking at, watching this week (because I'm sure you care).

Song: River by Akron/Family - Still pretty much been on repeat on my iPod.

Book: The Morning Watch by James Agee - just getting into this one. The syntax takes some getting used to.

Movie: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - Well, I only watched parts of it. Happened to be the parts with lots of slow motion. All that slow motion laughing in the end scenes in which everyone seems to be dressed in bedsheets: like some kind of creepy sequence from a dream that is about to become a nightmare.

Television: Eureka - It's available on hulu.com. Pretty entertaining. Also watched a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time just because it was created by Joss Whedon. Got lots of flak from Denny for that.

News: This article by Steven Johnson, which led to this somewhat surreal cover. Johnson has consistently insightful things to say about social networking and media. Coincidentally, I follow him on Twitter, which is how I learned about the article.

Word Cloud

Thank you Webby Awards for introducing me to Wordle. Just paste in the text, and it creates a word cloud. The largest words are the most used words. I took all the text from this blog (from my first blog entry in 2004 on), and created this word cloud.

Embarassingly, my most used words include, from least to most used: think, things, people, know, really, one, just and like. Apprently I write like a 16 year old speaks.

Birds Love Harmonicas

If I don't reach my goal of becoming a writer, I'm thinking of becoming a professional harmonica player. Or ornithologist.