On Thursday, January 21, The Office aired its worst episode ever. The “all new episode” was a clip show.

I had thought of about twenty different ways to start this post, but whatever. It doesn’t matter. Here’s the truth – Thursday’s The Office was terrible. And I think it’s a tell-tale sign of the decline of a great TV show.

The episode, structured around the thin plot of a consultant (well played by Flight of the Conchords’ David Cosgtabile) interviewing Toby about the company, was totally unnecessary and actually angering. TV needs to, and should have already, figure out that Clip Shows are irrelevant in the internet age. But more on that later.

Six seasons may just be too much for this (once?) great show. Feel free to compare the runs of the American Office to the British original, which purposefully limited itself to just two season. But I don’t know if it’s appropriate. The Office was a success in the United States, and kept getting better as we got more invested in Jim and Pam’s relationship. But in a few years, when we can buy the completed series on DVD, it might become apparent that the show peaked around season 4.

Clip shows are the mark of a dying series. It takes just about no writing, costs nothing and are usually sappy and lame (side note: Saved by the Bell had a least four different clip shows). But The Office on Thursday seemed particularly bad. Here’s why:

Clip shows are exceedingly pointless in a world with perpetually available internet, On Demand television and cable syndication. Clip shows just don’t make sense anymore. With the internet, I can watch The Office, or really any show past or present, whenever I want. I can watch whole episodes and then find clips I like and then clips related to those first clips. There are dozens of free site I can watch The Office, including NBC.com,  Hulu and iTunes, and I can watch clips on Youtube. Imdb has 247 The Office videos available. All these sites even have clips you can see only on the internet. If I wanted to watch a clip show of the The Office, I’d just make my own.

And if I don’t feel like watch a show on my computer, not a problem. My TV automatically records every new episode of The Office and used to record the show even when reruns aired. Again, I can watch anytime I want to. But even in a time when TV shows are literally at my finger tips, a clip show is extra annoying for a show like The Office.  The series is only half way through it’s sixth season, but already I’ve seen each episode probably an average of three times, certain episodes maybe even a dozen. There are Office reruns on every day. It plays on three different channels – NBC, TBS and FOX. It’s on hours a day. Once I looked at my guide and saw it was on for eight hours one Tuesday. Check out this week’s air schedule. That’s a lot of episodes. Sometimes, the exact same episode is on two different channels at once.

I’m honestly sick of rewatching old clips of The Office. It’s a truly great show, I just see it too often.   So every Thursday (actually usually Friday after work, when I watch my DVR recording) I get really excited to see a new episode. So if you’re going to show a clip show, I better have some warning. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

“I felt insulted,” said Ryan Morris, The Office expert and devotee. “If I wanted to see clips from the ‘A Benihana Christmas’ episode again I would just turn on TBS or one of the other 3 networks that airs reruns 24 hours a day.”

Maybe the real problem is that The Office is winding down; and that’s hard to take. The shows isn’t as good as it used to be. A big reason for that, I think, is that the tension, the dramtics, surrounding Jim and Pam is over. It was great watching Jim’s painful love of Pam and their hilarious flirting. But now things are fine between them. They’re married and happy. The show’s root has been, well, uprooted. Carell is still funny, but the show has eliminated a lot of the really awkward jokes and caustic edge it used to have. Michael is still funny, but he rarely makes you cringe like he used to. Also, Jim’s a boss. I don’t know about anyone else, but I liked Jim a lot more when he was a prank playing slacker.

The Office had a great run. I’ll still turn it on a rerun while I make dinner, letting Dwight lecture over the sound of banging pots. But last Thursday’s episode was a loud signal that the show is coming down from its peak. Maybe the US version should take a cue from its English parent.

I’ve been a movie extra a few times. I’m part of a casting agency that sends out casting calls for extras. I get about 5 or more e-mails a day from them. They need people to fill particular roles. It’s simple – if you think you fit, you submit yourself, they call you, you work for 15 hours and make $90. Sometimes I like a role so I submit. Sometimes they don’t really fit. Here are a few:

(Formatting note: there’s basic information that is always covered in each call; the show, the age, race and sex of the actor, the actual role, and if it’s a union job or not. Italics are my thoughts. Random note: I might never work in this town again for publishing this list of secrets)

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• GOSSIP GIRL: NON SAG TO PORTRAY FOOD VENDOR AGE 20′S TO 30′S WITH REAL WAFFLE MAKING EXPERIENCE 8/18

1) You just put batter in a machine!  2) I have real waffle eating experience. That work?  3) Does this mean that a fresh waffle will be made on every take?

• MERCY: NON AFTRA MEN AVAIL 4/5 ALL DAY NO CONFLICT THAT CAN PORTRAY ASIAN MEN IN THEIR 30′S & 40′S – Extra Male / 30 to 40 / All Ethnicities

All ethnicities! “Must be comfortable making squinty eyes by pulling at the sides of your eyes with your fingers”

• LAW & ORDER CI: SAG – MALES 25-45 TO PORTRAY DEAD BODIES. FLEX BET 4/21-4/29. MUST BE COMFORTABLE BEING SHIRTLESS ON A SLAB. UPPER BODY SHOULD BE BLEMISH FREE. ALSO MUST BE OK WITH MAKEUP/LATEX – WILL HAVE TOOL MARK/INDENTS ON FACE. MUST BE PAID UP SAG. PLEASE DO NOT CALL US!

Shirtless – I’m ok with that. Slab! f-that! Please note that playing a corpse is a UNION JOB!

• MERCY: DO NOT RESPOND IF YOU ARE NOT A GREAT SOFTBALL PITCHER!

I shouldn’t have changed all the spelling errors in these posts. This agency really doesn’t care about spelling. I fixed a word in every single one of these.

• LAW AND ORDER SEASON 20: must be comfortable portraying a lesbian.

• MERCY: Featured Dying AIDS Patient Extra Female / 50 to 65 / AfricanAm

why does the aids patient have to be black? Huh!? Ok, enough of that.

• WHEN IN ROME: GOOFY FACE HISPANIC MALE

Ouch. Who watches “When in Rome” anyway. I’ve barely heard of that.

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New Additions – hot from my inbox – 9/9/09

I found this article in the Financial Times, which is a British daily, their Wall Street Journal equivalent.  It’s an article about a new and horrifying phenomenon that’s infecting high-level Cricket matches across the island nation. I’ve copied the text for you, although I’m not sure that’s actually allowed or not, but I think it’s been cited properly. Here the link to the original article. I find it hilarious on so many levels – the funny words I don’t understand, the complete shock and incomprehension from the author that this could happen in a sporting event, the fear and anger,  just the basic and fundamental differences between Americans and Brits. Give it a read.

It’s Not Cricket

Published: August 6 2009 19:05 – Financial Times

The cricket authorities in England are awaiting the opening of Friday’s Test match with Australia with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Anticipation because the cricket this summer has been superb – and another England victory would clinch a rare triumph in an Ashes series against Australia. Dread because the English supporters have taken to ill-mannered booing of the Australian players, and this match will take place at Headingley, where the crowd is notoriously drunk and rowdy.

Cricket is a game that has always prided itself on its tradition of sportsmanship, captured in the very phrase – “It’s not cricket.” The chairman of the English cricket board has appealed to the crowd not to barrack Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, when he walks to the wicket. But the chairman may be disappointed.

Now comes an unexpected twist to the story. Leading members of the Australian team have said that they do not mind the barracking from the crowd – some even claim to find it inspirational. Shane Watson, Australia’s opening batsman, has said that “It’s a great part of being here in England.”

Being insulted by a drunk Yorkshireman in a polyester replica shirt is not normally counted as one of the highlights of a visit to England. But if the Australian team do no object to the abuse, do the rest of us have any right to complain?

Actually – yes, we do. It can be a real pain to sit anywhere near the “Barmy Army”, the rabid England supporters who do most of the chanting. At their worst, they are drunk, foul-mouthed, mindlessly partisan and curiously uninterested in the cricket. If they are allowed to set the tone at matches, supporters who prefer to watch in a more civilised atmosphere will simply stop going.

To be fair, on good days the Barmy Army can be funny. When Mark Waugh, an Australian player, was caught up in a betting scandal a few years ago, they came up with the song: “Mark Waugh is an Aussie/He wears the baggy cap/But when he saw the bookie’s cash/He said I’m having that.” This is Wildean wit compared with the one-word chant of “Ingerlund” favoured by football supporters.

The trouble is that too many England cricket fans crossed the line between “banter” and boorishness a long time ago. Chanting and booing the opposition have their place – at football matches. But if Test match cricket abandons its own tradition of sportsmanship, it will lose a large part of its charm along the way.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Imdb.com is a great site. Just type in any Actor’s name and get a list of all the movies he/she has ever been in, see everyone he/she has ever worked with. It has everyone on it; from the biggest Hollywood stars ever, to obscure foreign assistant directors, to friends of mine who have only ever been extras on one or two TV shows.

If you don’t know the format, it’s a simple one, the most important feature for this article being that most actors and film-types listed have a little picture next to their name, one selected, cropped, and posted by someone working for imdb.

Sometimes I’m shocked by the poor quality of the headshots displayed for particular actors. Especially when, for each personage, there is a special page labeled “photos,” that houses 1-100s of photos of that particular celebrity; naturally, the more famous they are, the more photos there will be.

So, I’ve made a list of great actors who have terrible imdb photos. Even my friends who are extras have better photos, much better, than the ones below.

Billy Crudup

This photo of Billy Crudup clearly comes from the movie Almost Famous. But Crudup is a good actor, and I don’t think he’d be too happy if that movie, and only that movie, defined his career. Imagine if imdb had decided to do that to him with his role from Watchmen. He would just have a big, blue, eyeless, CGI face. Plus, that mustache makes him a little hard to recognize.

Marlon Wayans

I don’t even think I have to say anything. This would be a terrible picture of anyone, let alone a big movie star. What’s even going on here? Is he hanging his head out of a moving car? No one could find a better picture of him? Really?

Talia Shire

She was Adrian in Rocky. She has 62 acting credits on imdb. But this photo doesn’t even show her face front on. Did someone take it at a restaurant with their camera-phone?

Allen Covert

You may not know who Allen Covert is, and you would never figure it out based on this picture. This headshot is a still image from the Adam Sandler movie Little Nicky. If this picture was all you knew about Covert, you would think he was an overweight, nearly bald, old actor. He’s not. This is not at all what he looks like. It was a particularly grotesque part in a particularly horrible film. So who is he really? Allen Covert is Sandler’s boy; appearing in basically all of Sandler’s movies, and even starring in a few of his own (although they were produced by his friend Adam’s company “Happy Madison Productions”).”

Sam Neill

He was in Jurassic Park! That movie was huge. You couldn’t find a photo where there was proper lighting?

John Bellushi

Uh, what? John Belushi doesn’t have a picture?  I know that he died young, but I’m pretty sure there was some photographic evidence of his life. And are there really no die-hard Animal House fans out there willing to email an image of their drunken hero?

Another thing, the URL for people listed on imdb all have a similar ending – each listing starts with “nm” (for “name,” I assume) which is followed by a string of numbers (the code for things besides people is slightly different, for example, the URL for movies and TV shows says “title/###”). The ending for the John Belushi pages looks like this; “nm0000004,” which means that Belushi was the fourth actor added to the site. He was forth in the mind of the website creators, in front of every other movie actor ever, besides 1-3. It goes Fred Astaire at nm0000001, then Lauren Bacall, Brigitte Bardot, and then John Belushi, after whom comes Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, and then Brando at eight. It’s a weird list, I know, but Belushi is right in the middle of it, so you would think someone would paste a picture of his big face next to his name. Even a terrible picture would be better than none at all. (For the record, all the actors and the one director listed above have great imdb headshots)

That’s it. I’m going to keep looking. It’s something that used to bother me a whole lot, but now I think it’s kind of a fun game.

test

Hello Everyone -

It’s been a very long while since I’ve posted anything here, and I apologize for that. I was away for about three weeks (two in Italy and one in Boston), but I’ve been back for another week now. I want to get back into the swing of blogging on this site, so this post is going to be about nothing, but will hopefully get the transcendentalist juices flowing again. You don’t have to read this, it probably won’t be interesting.

Once again, thank you to everyone at the Boston show. We had a great time doing it, and I hope you had a great time too, either watching it or helping out like so many did. It would be awesome to do a show there again, and we’re even talking about taking the show on the road more. The next show might even be in New Hampshire!

My job as a tutor is about to end, so that means I’m going to have to find another one. The process starts over. I’m trying to figure out how to really get paid for writing because what I’m doing now isn’t working so well. I am writing a lot more recently, which I feel really good about,but the question of course is the next step. I’ll keep you updated on what happens.

Also, I’m moving out of Brooklyn for a few months. I’ll be subletting Zeke’s room in the village. I’m excited to be there and very happy about moving out of my current place. Things were OK before but not great and the past few days they’ve been getting really weird and I can’t handle it. Stories for another time. I still haven’t explored my current neighborhood, but hopefully I’ll move back to the area after August. Living in Brooklyn is pretty nice.

So this just became an update on my life. Sorry about that, I’m sure most you don’t care. Next post will be a good one, I promise.

Anything else? The Lakers won the NBA finals. I usually like watching finals celebrations, but I turned this one off pretty quick. It was just really boring. I said to Stacey at the time that it felt like a bunch of guys who were just acting how they thought someone was supposed to act when the one the finals. It seemed really weird. The next day I read a Bill Simmons Article about the game and he said the exact same things I had said the night before. I knew I was right.

About a month ago, Alex posted this piece on an idea we came up with on the road.

Like subway scratchitti and cut-out art, the idea is to take the ads you see everyday and cover the actual ad text with thick black paint, leaving only the image by itself. This takes the commercial element out the image, and leaves it to stand on its own, so it displays its own text and message, void of the advertisers message.

This is what Alex originally wrote: When I’m walking down the street and see advertising everywhere I look I often wonder what those ads would convey if there was no product name or copy on it. Some things would just be a couple laughing. Some seem to have a deep meaning. Some are of people ripping their hair out of their heads while sitting at a computer. Most you look at and think, “What could that possibly be for?”

So, here are some more blacked-out ads (can you guess what they’re for?):

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Watchmen was a movie I was really excited to see a few months ago, and was planning on seeing in the theaters, lost enthusiasm for as its release was nearing; I can’t really tell you why (besides that a few months ago I figured I would have read the comic by now, which I haven’t). And now with it’s mixed reviews, my non-desire to pay $12 for anything, and the absence of people to go with me, I decided to skip the theater and watch it online.

I don’t watch movies online. I don’t really have a reason for this. I tried to figure out why, and I came up with a few thin excuses. The first is a fear of viruses; but I watch plenty of TV shows online, and actually got a virus doing it once, so I don’t know why I won’t watch movies, but keep watching TV shows. I download a fair amount of torrents, usually foreign films that I can’t find anywhere and have been dying to see. I just watched Goddard’s Breathless and Contempt, along with 8 1/2 by Fellini, and I have Fritz Lang’s M waiting for me. I mentioned all those so you think I’m start and interesting. I also get really fidgety when I watch things on my computer, and I can’t keep still. I found hour long episodes of shows to be difficult if I’m not prepared, so a 3 hour movie almost seemed like chore more than a pleasure, like Rousseau’s neglected beggar. And, I would like to think most importantly, I really appreciate the medium of film, and I know how different and better the experience of watching a movie on a big screen is, and how much you can lose by watching it on a low-res tiny computer screen. Just ask David Lynch, he’ll tell you all about it. But, I wanted to see Watchmen, and I heard of a reputable sight for it, so I sucked it up, and spent my Sunday in the one seat cineplex of my Brooklyn apartment.

To be brief – found the site, found a decent quality cam version, with decent loading speed, and fidgeted away for 2 hours, watching people explode. All in all, not so bad, better than paying $12, insanely worse than the DVD on an HDTV will look in four months.

But, things were going well, things in the story are coming together, I’m a little confused but that’s cool, more people are dying, awesome, prison riot, sweet, the watchmen joining together in full costume, all right I’m rolling, more exploding people, mars, yeah! YEAH! here comes the plot twist, still confused but hopeful, ALRIGHT! I’m grooving, HERE WE GO… and what happens? It switches to German! All of a sudden I’m getting Rorschach’s voice-over coming at me in a gritty, frighteningly fascist tongue, things are blowing up, there’s some superstructure on Mars, I have no idea what’s going on.

.

I flip around on the time-bar, and find that it’s not all in German, it does switch back to English, but after some important verbal exposition by the characters, explaining probably the entire movie.

So,I skip to the English, watch the rest as confused as before.

Things were ok by the end; they laid out the story pretty thoroughly at the climax, and I got to enjoy it. But I still have no fucking clue what the guitarist from Still Water was building on Mars, and why it was no big deal that the latex chick shattered it, after what I assumed was a thought out and purposeful process and reasoning for an enormous stone clock, but whatever.

So is there a moral to my story? I think it parallels the moral of the movie. Do I need to explain?

I don’t know if I’m going to stream another movie online. Didn’t really do it for me. Back in college, two of my roommates, Juan and Taylor, they would download literally every movie that was available, and then burn them onto dvd so we could watch it on our 60 inch TV. I liked that better.

I’ll leave out my actual review of the movie, although I bet I would have liked it better if it was on a screen taking up my entire field of vision, and I didn’t have access to spider solitaire.

I went looking through my Strunk and White (The Elements of Style, the archetypal English grammar and style guide) and found this gem of a phrase. In referring to how to make adverbs, they advise: “Do not dress words by adding ‘-ly’ to them, as though putting a hat on a horse.”

That was the best one, but I found a few more pieces of expert advice:

“Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason.”

“A claw hammer, not an ax, was the tool with which he murdered her.”

“Write in English”

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Bibliography:

The Elements of Style Strunk, William Jr.; White, E.B. Forth Edition. Longman Press, New York, NY. 1957, 1972, 2000.

I went to the Guggenheim’s The Third Mind (a term invented by William S. Borroughs, a member of the Beats, who, could we consider to be an old New Transcendentalist?) exhibition on Friday. It was a great show, focusing on East-meets-West art in the 20th century. At the exhibit, there was a generous amount of mention of the Transcendentalists, specifically Henry D. Thoreau, for the similarities between The Movement, and Zen Buddhism. Both focus on transcendence through self reflection, especially through an understanding of nature.

My favorite pieces –
The Sound of Ice Melting: two large blocks of ice are amplified by 8 surrounding microphones, discussing a common theme of ‘when you think there is nothingness, you are usually wrong.’

Tibetan Prayer Bells: They lay a track around the spiraling museum rotunda, upon which they would periodically send down a shuttle that rang Tibetan Prayer Bells as it way its way to the bottom. It sounded nice, everyone would gather around to watch, filling the atrium with heads. I’ve recently been interested in Tibetan prayer, because it is passive, rather than active – the wind blows the prayer flags, the bells sound by movement, a prayer wheel is also spun by the wind, all activities which please the gods mechanically, without direct involvement from the one praying. This Guggenheim piece was extra interesting, because it was a mechanical device, an added extra level of artifice, even more east-west, with the addition of technology to passive prayer,

Unfortunately, the exhibition closes in the next few days, so you have to take my word on it.

Our favorite street artist, Poster Boy, was arrested last month.

If you don’t know who he is, Poster Boy is New York subway artist, who’s work appears seemingly at random in Metro stations all over the city. With a razor blade has his only tool, Poster Boy slices art out of all those awful ads that get in your face everyday on your way to work (for a quick introduction to him, take a look at the video below). We’ve mentioned subway vandalism and scratchitti a few times before, but Poster Boy is our favorite criminal/artist, and certainly the most known. He’s been written about in New York Magazine, the Guardian, and his arrest has been covered by the Times. Every time I take a train in this city, I covet a chance to see a new work in person, on the platform, where I’m forced to study the same oversized faces and beguiling slogans daily.

I learned of his arrest when I passed a box for the New York Press, a magazine I’d never seen before, and saw in red comicbook lettering, over a neon green background, the headline “Who is Poster Boy?” I grabbed the paper, the display copy since the box was empty, and opened to the article. Poster Boy, real(?) name Henry Matyjewicz, was arrested last month at a soho gallery, where they were displaying a new work he’d done with Aakash Nihalani (the guy who makes those tape-cubes on the sidewalk). It was a completely legal piece of art, but the show opening advertised a live appearance by the outlaw, and so some plainclothesman showed up and busted him (apparently he was nabbed because he was bragging to some girl that he was Poster Boy, when he probably should have kept his mouth shut; but can you blame him?).

There’s an interview with Henry Matyjewicz, not Poster Boy, in the paper. It’s pretty interesting. For possible legal reasons, but hopefully more artistic and ironic reasons, Matyjewicz separates himself from Poster Boy, referring to him as if it were a different person. He talks as if Poster Boy is more than a person, and instead a movement, that he, Matyjewiscz, sometimes agrees with, and sometimes doesn’t. He even says that sometimes he wishes he could be more like Poster Boy. It’s an interesting interview, not great, but still worth checking out. I’m not sure the writer’s intentions, and he sometimes makes Matyjewicz sound like an idiot, but you can find the article here.

As a final note, the piece Poster Boy was showing at the gallery the night we was arrested, the piece above the article, ironically features a cut-out from Medea Goes to Jail.

Check out his flickr page, too. Maybe you’ve seen his work before, and just not realized it.

(oh, and he’s not really our first guest. We were talking about trying to get him, but it’s hard to do an interview from jail.)