Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Lost in Lost
Wednesday
October 4, 2006
"So, maybe I'll see you there
We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares"
-Petula Clark "Downtown"
I'm writing this from the computer at my brother's house. It's 11:52 PM CDT as I type this, so who knows what is going to show up on here.
I just finished watching tonight's episode of Lost with Dustin and Whitney. Whitney had seen the show before but didn't like it (making her in the vast minority of people I know who don't like Lost.) Dustin had never seen it, but trying to explain to him what was going on would've been an impossible task, particularly as the episode went along. So he had to watch and be confused about nearly as much as I was.
Thoughts on the episode? It was intriguing, and at times insightful, but it also created more questions than it answered. And there are a lot of questions. Doubt me? The site lostmysteries.blogspot.com has an amazing chronicle of unanswered questions regarding the show. The continuity challenges of keeping it all together must be a logistical nightmare. At least, I hope continuity is being kept as we go along...
It's worth mentioning that the show worked in the song "Downtown" by Petula Clark tonight. Of course, Whitney and Dustin didn't know what it was (or if they did, they didn't respond to me pointing it out.) I really like that song, and while Lost doesn't go overboard with the music, its obscure-but-compelling choices have been subtle but duly noted.
Another show that I saw the season (and in this case, series) debut of was Friday Night Lights. That was better than I had expected. The book is one of my all-time favorites, following the Permian Panthers in west Texas in the fall of 1988. They changed it for TV to the made-up town of Dillon, TX (as opposed to Odessa, TX), and as Dustin told me, you have to pretend that none of what was in the book or the movie (which I haven't seen) exists.
The editing on FNL is really impressive and arguably breakthrough for network TV. The cuts are super-fast, like MTV in a way, but less jarring because the pacing is frenetic enough to make the editing style fit. Conversations are jumped between without hesitation, and the non-conventional approach works well, at least from my vantage point.
Plus, when something non-realistic happens (i.e. the captains being called out after Dillon's star QB was hurt making a tackle on an interception for a stupid mini-speech from the referee), I can blame it on "that's the way it's done in Texas." To that end, ignorance is bliss. I know enough about high school football, what goes on inside the locker room, etc. to know a non-realistic scene when I see it. Fortunately, the show keeps that to a minimum.
The football scenes themselves are pretty realistic feeling, albeit also edited to the same frenzied pace as many of the conversation sequences.
Unlike the NBA or NHL playoffs, MLB doesn't mess around. Two day games at home, and poof, Minnesota is down 0-2 to Oakland in a best of five series. That was fast. Rainout for the Yankees tonight, but that's okay since I was driving up here tonight and would've missed most (if not all) of it. Most MLB I wouldn't care to hear on the radio, but this was one rare case that I wish I had XM's feed of that game. At this point it's Sirius 135, XM 2 as far as advantages go (with XM to drop to one when they lose NASCAR after this year.)
If it seems like I'm picking on XM, it's because I am. Poor decisions by management are sinking that company. $55 million for Oprah? Granted, bringing in Martha Stewart was a mistake by Sirius, but maybe not a total bad move if it was the catalyst to that major money-losing move by XM.
Incidentally, Sirius announced that it has 5.1 million subscribers as of now. I can't listen to regular radio anymore. Sometime soon, all of Birmingham radio is going to receive the lambasting that it deserves over on my TheRadioBlog.com site. In driving the company truck yesterday and today (without my Sirius), I was reminded yet again of how horrible terrestrial radio is compared with satellite, particularly in Birmingham.
Apparently ESPN has retaliated against excellent play-by-play man Ron Franklin for last year's now-infamous "It's 49-21, sweetheart" line by demoting him to the less-important ESPN2 Saturday night game (versus the big SEC night game on ESPN.) Disney seems to be doing everything in its power to piss off college football fans. From forcing Kirk Herbstreit into doing color for a Saturday game, thus forcing College Gameday to emanate from where Herbstreit is every week, to moving in idiot color commentator Paul Maguire, to many other bizarre moves... clearly there is some upper-level meddling going on that is having a negative impact on the network.
Well it's 12:30 AM CDT now, and my bro still isn't home... so I'm heading to sleep.
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