I Am This Woman

Today is the first day of the major network TV season, marked last night by the (sycophantic) Emmys.

While I admire the accomplishments of people who are funny, awesome and talented, and have watched TV regularly since I was about five, I am dumping my cable box today.

Blasphemy! Anathema! It’s the FIRST day of the season!! Some shows have already premiered! House! Fringe! “You can’t live without them! You gotta have your stories!” says the little voice in my head.

Little voice in my head, there is Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, network websites… these TV moguls are not stupid. They can see that Web 2.0 (whatever that is today) has changed ‘appointment television.’ If you can time shift with TiVo, then why bother to catch the show as it airs, interrupted with all those pesky commercials? No, I’ll see it online, say the legions of folks who are challenging the paradigm and being much more selective in their viewing.

More power to you! More power to me! More time for me, that is. I have things to do, esp. between 7 and 10 pm.

And there is a huge backlog of paper-based entertainment systems that I need to catch up on. Gone are the days when the baby grabs the book, when the baby requires following around and monitoring to the point that keeping a train of thought is impossible.

Plus I plan to transition to some kind of computer-driven TV/viewing system. Apple TV isn’t there yet, but TVs are now available so you can plug a computer into them. So I’ll be migrating my tech in that direction. But not for several months. (Fiber optics is in the neighborhood, so I might try that for a while. But good god, I want to escape commercials! I want to watch the show, not the solipsistic stream of crap promoting other shows.)

As I listen to Jennifer Hudson sing “And I Am Telling You,” from Dream Girls, I am reminded of the Theory of Strawberry Flavoring in Media, posited by my dear friend Uncle Bellfoot, perhaps based on the wisdom of Frank Zappa.

This theory is based on the way artificial strawberry flavoring is made. A food company gets tons of strawberries and mashes them up, and feeds them to focus groups. Then they start adding chemicals and stuff together to taste just like strawberries. Focus groups come in and say, “oooh, that’s too tart, that’s too sweet, that’s yukky, that’s moldy.” More chemicals are added, things are removed and tasted again… and pretty soon, you have a strawberry-flavored syrup that is LEAST offensive to the MOST people. And that’s never been introduced to an actual strawberry. That, folks, is how television works too.

You get the least offensive, formulaic package that the suits think will be a HUGE hit. It has to play to a broad specturm of America (hence the term “broadcast”). Otherwise, there is no money in it. Actors cost too much. HBO figured this out a long time ago, and charges a premium for their superior programming. It’s good. (It’s also available on DVD because they can make money that way too.)

But it has to have mass appeal, just like strawberry flavoring. Even the sexiness is subject to this. There are good shows that flaunt the model, reinvent it - these shows are good. BUT THEY ARE STILL SURROUNDED with strawberry flavoring, in the form of endless promotion of other crappy shows and the advertisements that drives the machine. Yes, there are good things to watch, but how is the consumer taste driving the decision making of the producers? That’s an easy analysis.

Listening to Hudson, and watching her in that scene, belt out that amazing R&B ballad with such skill, verve and sheer energy calls to mind her appearance on American Idol. Keep in mind that this show requires the consensus/popularity vote - the strawberry syrup vote. Jennifer Hudson has talent, but perhaps she is not as popular as one of the other folks, with perhaps less verve and talent, but lots more popularity. Likeability. Can’t be too tart, too black, too pink, too big, too small, too toothy.

I happen to like singers with an edge. With something there - in body, voice, spirit. There has to be a there there. Sometimes the sheer lack of there comes together in such a delicious way that strawberry flavoring is indeed tasty.

So, when I listen to Jennifer Hudson, I think that perhaps the best thing to happen to her is to get voted off. Ok, leave Idol, get some connections and experience, and go be Jennifer Hudson-flavored! Sassy, smouldering, grounded, regal and ocean-deep. Oscar winning virtuosity like that cannot be contained by the American Idol brand of strawberry syrup.

By dumping cable and network, I am skipping past the strawberry syrup and upping our intake of actual strawberries. And chocolate, jalapenos, pickles, mustard and all the other flavors the entertainment/creative world has to offer. Books, movies, selected shows (House, Lost, Heroes online), etc.

This all precludes the idea of “turning it off.” I am weak. I love my stories. I will be watching movies, you can be sure. But I’m making it harder to get my strawberry flavoring, and seeing if wasabi tamari suits me today. Or Dickens. Or painting while Coldplay or Mozart cycle somewhere on shuffle.

I’m sure I’ll be jonesing in two or three days, so stay tuned for my rationalizations, justifications and coping strategies.

There have been many many blog ideas come and go in the past few days. I cannot spend the time to do justice to any of them. I’m leaving for Africa on Monday, and my experience with international travel is that, despite global economy, it is unlikely that a Walgreen’s will be on every corner. Plus if there is a “chemist shop” or “Apotheke” or “medisyne,” things will cost a gazillion poker chips and I’ll only have the blue ones and not the required red ones. So if I want a band-aid, it’s good to have one on hand. We are also taking an emergency jar of peanut butter. If all else fails, there is some kind of bread wherever we might be stranded, or we can eat it with our fingers.

So here are those blog ideas, in raw kernel form, for the silo:
I Am This Dog: a little spiel about Lucy and how she’s fitting in. How she’s not anything like Sasha Queen of Dogs, who had a great sense of humor but was a bit standoffish. No, Lucy is more like the Elizabeth during the reign of Bloody Mary, all obsequy, compliance and sweetness, with hidden fire. However, she, like Sasha, will lick up the bathwater on the edge of the tub, and then proceed to dry your arm off as well.

Ruby Red: the magic of clicking with creative people when there are just enough ruby red martinis in the room. I attended a mediabistro.com networking party, and found immediate creative juice with people who work in my field, though not in my industry. It was quite fun, and I have some new contacts to develop as I proceed into my freelance career. (Ruby red martini = vodka and ruby red grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed, shaken and strained with a cherry.)

RTFM: I succumbed to reading the manual for my new cell phone. It’s not that I have teh dumb, it’s just that some engineer somewhere makes the decision of where to put things in the menus, and it’s NOT INTUITIVE. Please please have the person who writes the manual also help out with these menu decisions? KTHXBAI.

Hide the Stash: (No, not THAT kind of stash.) My yarn stash has been dominating the bedroom for quite some time. It’s calling to me, tempting me to start new projects, acquire new product, seek new patterns. ENOUGH. I call a HALT. The stash will be lovingly organized and labeled in bins, tucked into closets and drawers, and the works in progress will be at hand for those moments of knitting enjoyment. I run the stash, and don’t you skeins forget it!

There might be another blog post before departure, but with the list of things to do growing and things not getting crossed off, my attention must be elsewhere. I may or may not have connectivity on the journey. Either one will be good. And yes, there will be perhaps 500 to 1000 photos, if I know myself. Might even take a film camera to give the lad something to do with his hands.

(11 of 50)

There’s such a thing as just chillin’ and hanging out and goofing off. There’s another thing that I have discovered, which I’ll call creative down time for lack of a better term.

After working hard on a paper, a set of prints in the darkroom or a detailed fiddly bit of knitting, I have often pushed back in desperation and just gone to take a shower, make a cup of tea, go in another room, or throw the tennis ball for the dog.

Invariably, though it’s never really fully intentional, I come up with a solution to the fiddly problem I was pondering and not getting anywhere with… sometimes, it comes out of the clear blue sky, sometimes it all seems to be worked out when I get back to the keyboard, the books, the knitting. If I take a break <i>in order to find a solution</i>, then my monkey mind will start flinging poo and acting very very badly. No, I have to tell myself that I am taking a REAL break because I’m sick and tired of the project.

I have built this into my writing process, usually by allowing myself plenty of time during the working phase and at the end, right up to the deadline. If I allow myself an extra day, or two hours in the morning of a due date, then I can sleep on it and do a final revision.

And it just happened today while I was throwing together an iMovie (which is what I use instead of PowerPoint these days). I finally got all my images together and scored, and now I am counting on a good night’s sleep to come up with the voiceover script, which *has* to be done tomorrow in between a couple of appointments and before the (noisy) boy comes home from school.

Speaking of good night’s sleep, that’s where I’m going now!

Today is Monday. I have the day off. It is the last day of December, which is the last month of the year.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. I have the day off. It is the first day of January, which is the first month of the year.

But it’s still just 24 hours, just like today, just like yesterday, and March 23 and August 19 and June 15. It is not a whole new year, but another day in a chain of days that have been labeled conveniently by our calendar, and celebrated with fireworks, balldrops, champagne and kissing. (Hey, I’m all for champagne and kissing!) (more…)

For too long, I’ve been running on E, and filling my creative and emotional tank with just enough to get by. When faced with taking a weekend completely off from email, work, even the keyboard, I find myself unsure and a little bit defensive. Nothing wrong with my hobbies and business aspirations. Nothing wrong with installing some WordPress things, moving a domain, checking email. Nothing wrong with responding to that email - a weekend time stamp makes me look committed, right?

See where that’s heading? Last weekend, even though I had been sick, I spent about 14 hours at the keyboard… which is nearly TWO working days. And that would be ….. NO WEEKEND. Well, a weekend spent in this chair. Maybe it was interesting, maybe I made a few dollars. But that’s no weekend. Not when you spend five days in the chair, working and pretty much doing the same things. (more…)