I hadn’t realized before but hulu does that amazon thing where they suggest other shows you might like based on whatever show you happen to be watching. Same way amazon does with books, although I have to say I often find amazon’s suggestions suspect, at least for my taste. Anyhoo… one of the suggestions associated with Green Wing, a show that I’m still watching obsessively, is Spaced,  a half-hour comedy. (Do the call them sit-coms in England?) And I figured, oy, why not give it a go, then.

[this is where the video of the first episode of Spaced via hulu.com would appear if I could just get it to work - dammit!]

Glad I did.

Spaced is about two twenty-something Londoners. Tim (Simon Pegg aka Shaun from Shaun of the Dead) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson, who has a bit role in Shaun as Yvonne) who both suddenly find themselves in need of new lodgings and decide to pose a professional couple so that they can rent a nice flat, clearly an allusion to the 70s sit-com Three’s Company.

The show is chock-full of pop culture references, especially TV and movies. And, a la Scrubs, it employs fantasy sequences to great effect (or is it affect?). Also like Scrubs it is a single-camera show, but I don’t know how unique that is to British TV.

Other GenX-ieties  include: Tim is a skateboarding graphic artist who wants to work for a comic book company but is currently working part-time at a comic book shop; while Daisy is a journalist who is on the dole.

Simon Pegg does much of the writing and the director is Edgar Wright, who collaborated with Pegg to make Shaun of the Dead. Also, Nick Frost, who plays Shaun’s best friend Ed in the romantic-comedy-zombie flick plays Tim’s best friend, Mike, who is described as a “weapons expert.” Much of what appears in Shaun of the Dead was first portrayed in Spaced. Some of it practically verbatim.

Another treat for me is that the character of Brian, the quirky, twitchy, semi-reclusive artist who lives upstairs from Tim and Daisy, who is played by Mark Heap, the actor that portrays the wonderfully pompous Dr. Alan Staythem in Green Wing.  Clearly Heap has a talent for infusing his characters with all kind of interesting traits and foibles that make them a little creepy and endearing at the same time, no small accomplishment.

At this point I can’t say which show I like better. It’s difficult to decided. Green Wing has way more swearing and sexual references. But Spaced has loads more pop culture stuff. In the end it hardly matters. What I can say is that I’d like to own both shows on DVD. I think Spaced is available for Region 1 where as Green Wing still is not.

In any case, both shows are more than valid GenX vehicles. Spaced is about younger GenXers, of the kind featured in Douglas Coupland’s novel, Generation X. While Green Wing is about older GenXers who have matriculated into the workforce.

And both shows are funny and sarcastic and surreal and ultimately very touching and human.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed,” is not by age a GenXer, but her new book, “Bright-Sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has underminded America,” will no doubt strike a chord with many a GenXer. It did for me anyway.

As soon as I saw this book I knew I wanted to read it, because one of my pet peeves is overly-optimistic people. Now, I’m sure that there will be those who brand Ehrenreich (as well as myself) bitter or angry or “negative” as is the popular slander, but that’s not the case. The opposite of “positive,” as it is jammed down our throats today, is not despair and “negativism” it is rational and realistic. Because there is a fine line between being optimistic and being naive, and the people Ehrenreich takes to task employ “postive thinking” facsism to the point of self-delusion. I’m talking people like the creepy ever-grinning Joel Osteen and the Rhonda Byrne, author of “The Secret,” (ALERT! ALETER!: a version of The Secrete for teens is being published).

Ehrenreich traces the roots of “postive thinking” facism back to something called New Thought, which was a reaction to strict Calvinist attitudes of the time, throug  Norman Vincent Peele and his PT Manifestor, “The Power of Positive Thinking” who really popularized the movement, up to the current day PT Gurus and iconslike Depok Chopra and Oprah Winfrey (query: why do both of their names sound like a horrible-taste vegeatable?)

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being optimistic but with out a healty dose of rationality and realism and yes even pessimis it just bullshit it can lead to such things as the recent economic collapse. The cult of PT has so permiated corporate culture that within it those who would dare to point out a problem or suggest that things are anything but peachy keen may suffer ostricization or even firing, which is what happened to the guy that worked for Lehman Brothers who tried to tell the President/Ceo whatever-the-hell his title was that the realeastate market was going to be problem and that they needed to change their business model. Two year after the dude was canned Lehman Brothers went busto and former Pres/Ceo still doesn’t seem to get it.

And why should the jackasses bother to change, to be the competent, rational and thoughtful leaders that once headed up corporations, when the gov’t will bail their asses out when they fail miserably? Hell, I’d walking around smiling all the time too if I knew if that any mistake I made would not only get me canned but might actually earn me a raise. But I’m still no donning that stupid Osteen mullet; I did my time in the 80s fashion hell, thank you very much, and I’ve not intention on returning to it.

I have been obsessively watching and re-watching this BBC tv show entitled Green Wing, which I stumbled across on hulu.com.

It is an absurdest send up of hospital-based soap operas. Kind of like a British version of Scrubs, covering much of the same ground, except without the Scrubs signature “fantasy sequences.” Green Wing’s absurd element are played off as real, which in some ways makes them even funnier. Both shows are adept at mixing affecting (or is it effecting?) drama with hilarious and often over-the-top humor. Scrubs has more pop-culture references but Green Wing clearly had more leeway with language — the F-bomb gets dropped regularly, plus words like cock and cunt and all those cool Brit curses, like bloody and bollocks etc. In any case, if you’re a fan of Scrubs you may enjoy Green Wing as well.

Green Wing ran for only two seasons, like The Office, with 9 episodes each season, the very last episode running and hour and half. And it was an award winning show apparently, that was much praised. Of course, had it been an American TV show it would have been extended several more season, probably until it got old and stale, even though actors would be making obscene amounts of money per episode. I kind of like this form of programing. It allows for more ideas to get developed, and keeps shows from getting stale and turning into little more than advertising delivery devices. Although, I can’t but wish that there was more to Green Wing. But then you know you’ve done some right when viewers want more. Good fiction is the same way.

Also like Scrubs, Green Wing is definitely a GenX show. I don’t know if the whole GenX thing is even a topic of interest over there in Britian, but just watch on episode and you’ll see what I mean.

The story-line follows Dr. Caroline Todd (the female, British version of the bumbling but lovable J.D from Scrubs) as she begins her new post at the hospital in question. But this show is rarely if ever about medicine or hospital work, unlike Scrubs, which actually strives to get the medical aspects correct. And Caroline quickly finds her affections toggling between Mac, the young talented surgeon with the a lion’s main of blonde hair, and Guy, the brash anesthestist, who can be equally charming and repuslive. The love story is credible if predictable. But what really makes the show is the cast of supporting characters, whose story lines are no less interesting, and often even more hilarious, especially the spastic Senior Cunsultant Radiologits, Dr. Alan Staythem. Mark Heap who plays the stuttering, sputtering, spastic Alan is incredible. And some of the sex scene played between him and the Joanna Claw character or some of the funniest I ever seen portrayed anywhere.

Much of my argument for Green Wing being a GenX show is instinctive. It just feels like one. It has an Xer sensibility. Particularly in that it is mainly about a group of friends, and not a family as most tradition sitcoms are. The humor is often of the caustic, sarcastig insulting variety, and contains an inherent underlying sense of affection for the object of the jibes.

I could not ascertain the creator Victoria Pile’s age but I’d be willing to guess that she falls within or very near the GenX age range. The actress who plays the main character, Dr. Caroline Todd, certainly is. Tamsin  Greig is 42, born in 1967, same as me. Also:

Julian-Rhind Tutt (great name btw) who plays Mac, was born in 1966

Stephan Mangan, who plays Guy, was born in 1972

Michelle Gomez, who plays Sue White, one of the most insanely hilarious portrayals of a clearly unstable person, was born in 1968

Etc.

If I could buy this show on DVD I would, but it isn’t availble (yet only I hope) on region 1 format, which the U.S. falls into. I’m hoping in the near future it will be.

]]> http://junkdrawer67.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/brit-genx-tv-2/feed/ 2 Lopez http://junkdrawer67.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/should-we-stay-or-should-we-go-2/ http://junkdrawer67.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/should-we-stay-or-should-we-go-2/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:35:22 +0000 sonnypi67 http://junkdrawer67.wordpress.com/?p=1734 ]]>

…to California.

According to this Time magazine article about the Golden State the answer would be, well, duh!

Even with it’s problems — the budgets, unemployment, housing market — and all the braying doomsayers that are sure that California is going to go busto, it’s still a mighty fine place to be right now. Anyway, it’s got to be better than Michigan. Plus, as I”ve harped before, it’s got great beches, the Pacific Ocean, huge national parks, cool deserts (if you dig that sort of thing, and I do) and there’s something to be said for not having to wear pants. Plus, this article makes California seem like a place that we’d more at home in, more in tune with the thinking and attitudes.

In the interest of comparison, Time has also been conducting an on-going long-term reporting projec on the city of Detroit. Of course, we don’t live in Detroit proper, but still.

It doesn’t help Michigan’s cause any that after cutting the K-12 budget by approximately $10 million they are cutting it yet again, to the tune of $165 per pupil, and possibly more. We won’t know for sure until the standoff in Lansing if brought to a close.  The most frustrating thing about it is that the schools already budgeted according to what they were told they would be afforded only to have to readjust after the fact, because pols in Lansing can’t get their shit together.

Title: It Feels So Good When I Stop

Author: Joe Pernice

Genre: novel

This is basically slacker fiction, about a  white, 20-something [nameless narrator] who bolts his marriage after only one day. Not sure what the point of not naming the narrator is exactly. Is it supposed to make him more of an “everyman,” a concept that I’ve always found rather pretentious? That particular descriptor doesn’t seem to quite fit this book. Maybe Pernice just never got around to naming the character. Sort of like the “you” in Bright Lights, Big City, which I’ve read many times, and I’m still not sure where the main character’s name is actually mentioned, if at all. Maybe Pernice is paying homage to BLBC. Who knows? Does it matter?

It’s set in 1996 and from what I can gather I’d be about the same age as the narrator. In 1996, I was graduating with my MFA from  Western Michigan, after which I hung around Kalamazoo for a couple more years, teaching adjunct at the university and working maintenance and cleaning at Oasis Hot Tubs.

I like this book. I’m still in the midst of it, though. Good narrative drive. Witty. Sarcastic. And just the right amount of pop culture references; doesn’t feel forced, like the dude is trying too hard. Of course, I particularly love the music references, something I wished I was better at in my own writing, but my knowledge of music is simply not very sophisticated (is it redundant to say “simply not very sophisticated”?).

I have to say after starting strong, though, the first part seemed to rush to an end, with an incident that seemed perhaps overly dramatic and then isn’t really dealt with afterwards, or at least not yet. It’s not a big deal. Not something I’d call a flaw even. More of a quirk really.

I wasn’t familiar with Pernice before I picked up this book. Or rather I wasn’t aware that I was familiar with him. He appeared on TV show the Gilmore Girls, which my wife loves.  I like it too, for it’s very GenXness, especially the sarcastic, quick-tongued humor, and boundless pop culture references.

This is the kind of book I wished I could write, not just in subject matter, but in size. My writing tends to spiral out of control, growing and growing like an invasive species or something. I’d like to be able to keep it more…controlled, you know. Condensed. I think that creates an energy in the prose.

… “Manhood for Amateurs.”

excerpt:

Another of the book’s consistent motifs is the disappearance of childhood. With vivid access to his own, Chabon is able to contrast the ways in which his kids’ imaginations are imposed upon and pre-imagined by, for example, the “authoritarian nature of the new Lego” and “the orthodoxy of ‘Toy Story.’” To Chabon’s mind, these products lack the open-endedness of “crap” entertainment like the short-lived “Planet of the Apes” TV show of his youth, into whose shaky plotlines a child could more easily project himself. Still, he trusts in the innovative potential of the child psyche: “Kids write their own manuals in a new language made up of things we give them and the things they derive from the peculiar wiring of their own heads.” As a manual to Chabon’s own peculiar wiring, “Manhood for Amateurs” makes for an insightful and highly entertaining guide.

read full review here

Chabon’s conjuring of his childhood is perhaps my favorite part this book as well. And I can relate to his lamenting of the loss of childhood freedom like the kind I knew. <sigh>

I’m reading this book slowly, savoring every piece like a fine piece of chocolate. Mmmmmmmmmm.

…are stepping up and taking the reigns, even if we have to shove a few gray-hairs (McCain) and Boomers (Billary) aside to get there. Hey, that’s politics! Better luck next…oops, that’s right,  there won’t be one. Sorry. <shrug>

It’s happening elsewhere too, like Nevada. Check this column about the governor’s race there. Which I was hipped to by JenX67.

And locally here where I live, though on a much smaller scale. There is a Library Board election and one of the candidates, whom I met, I’d put at about my age, which pleased me because there seem to be far too many of the old guard still in place. Some of whom just won’t go, even though they probably should.

Mine and other GenXer’s hope is that our generation of politicians will be more pragmatic. Will disagree but work together. Will dispense with the parroting of one-note campaigns. Will simply do the work that needs to be done in a fashion that is respectable.

Of course, as a typical GenXer, I am wary. But I am more hopeful than I have been in some time.

I’ve been reading this new book by Michael Chabon. Nonfiction: a collection of essays. Entitled “Manhood for Amateurs.” With an every growing pile of fiction that I want to read, I’m pretty selective about nonfiction books. But I’ll read anything by MC.

His novel “The Mysteries of Pittsburg” is still perhaps my favorite early-twenties coming of age novel; I’ve read it three times, and probably will again. For pur entertainment sake, “Wonder Boys” is superb. And what can one say about “The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay” other than it’s an absolute masterpiece, a Pulitzier Prize-winning novel about comic books. How cool is that? And, his short story, “Son of the Wolfman” is so good that reading it is inspiring and makes me want to give up writing simultaneously.

There was an article in the NY Times over the weekend that dubbed this collection “Daddy Lit,” a companion genre to go with “Mommy Lit,” but it is much more than that. What I like about it is that it is a collection. And even though I’m sure much care was put into the ordering of the essays and is intended to be read from beginning to end, just like short story collection, there’s nothing keeping you from jumping around. Plus, short, well-written essays, like short stories, when done well, can really pack a punch. And these essays do- WOMP! BLAM! ZOWEEE!

The second essay in the book, Williams and I, Chabon ruminates on how little a man has to do to be told by a complete stranger that he is a good father. Where as a woman has to do what?

“….perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic pen on her eldest child while simultaneously nursing her infant and buying two weeks worth of healthy but appealing break-time snacks for the entire cast of The Lion King.”

Of course, ultimately the essay addresses the fact that he, Chabon, like a lot of GenX dads these days, does do much more than haul his kid along on a trip the grocery store. Unlike men of his father’s generation, he’s more than a distant, slightly mysterious and perhaps at times menacing bread-winner.

Heck, in my family, I am not the main bread winner. In fact, my wife makes at last twice what I do. My job was selected because it is less demanding and more flexible; I can always be available for my daughter if need be. That way C doesn’t have to worry about skipping an important meeting or rushing an important report in the event that, say, Addy has to be picked up from school sick or something like that. I rarely have meeting, and they are never really that important. Also, because it is a city  job basically, it provided good health insurance. And, it is not very taxing so I have brain wattage left over at the end of the day to write.

It doesn’t and never has bothered me that my wife makes more than me. I’m among that 89% of people (men and women) who say that it’s all right for women to not only work but make more money than the man in a marriage. For us, such a circumstance was probably inevitable. C thrives in a corporate setting, whereas I was stymied by it and would prefer not to work in the world if at all possible.

What does bug me, though, is that women still aren’t paid as well as a man for doing the same work. That not only deprives my wife of her due, but my family of income, earned income. And that’s just bullshit on a stick!

Sometimes it’s confusing being a GenX Dad/Man. We’re the transition generation, the first to have to operate under new and very different rules than our fathers’. But it’s cool too, because to a certain dergree we get to make up the rules as we go. We get to be pioneers in a way. We can decided, to a greater or lesser degree, what being a man/Dad means. It can be as traditional or as progressive as we want. No doubt in most cases it ends up being some mixture of the two.

Anyhoo…so far these essays seem like they will serve as good jumping off points to talk about different issues of manhood.

It’s been awhile since I last updated my Featured Blog. Partly because I’m slacker extrodinaire. And partly because fuck if I knew what to change it to. So a couple of blogs got an extended ride on the jundrawer67 Featured Blog spotlight, which must have brought them so many hits their hard drives started smoking. Oh yeah…….. I’m big baby!

Anyhoo… my NFB belongs to author Bonnie Jo Campbell, whose latest collection of short stories, American Salvage, was recently nominaged for the National Book Award.  I was totally blown away when I read about it the NY Times Sunday paper, which I’d put on hold some time back and it just started up again this Sunday. Of course, I probably would have learned this news eventually.

I was an MFA student at Western Michigan University at the same time as BJC. So it was particuarly exciting news. Although not all that surprising. BJC was, as I recall, one of what we lesser scribblers in the program called the Big Gun writers. You just knew she was writing great stuff, and that she was going places, writing-wise.

So a big congrats to Bonnie Jo Campbell. And here’s hoping you bring home the prize. And if not, fuck it, have damn good time while you there!

And just to add a small self-egrandizing kudos for myself. Of the five works of fiction nominated for the NBA I’ve read three. The novel Far North by Marcel Theroux, which I recommend; most of BJC collection, American Salvage, as well as Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips, who has long been a favored author of mine. Column McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin was on my reading list as soon as it passed through my grimy  little paws at the library — no seriously, i’m not bsing. And, as for the story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin I did pick it up and start it but filly admit to never finishing it and never getting around to returning to it.

I’m just saying that after picking three Pulitzer winner: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and years back The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon,  plus some other, I’ve got a pretty good nose for prize-winners when I read them.

Impressive, eh. Yeah. I know. Not so much. But can’t you just let me have my little dillusion for a little while. It ain’t hurtin nobody.

The generation not the comic book heroes. Sorry…

Mindlessly surfing the web — well, not exactly I was doing my  irregular (why does that seem like such a GenX word?)* search for GenX authors/Literature that I may not yet be aware of — I came across this article by Douglas Coupland on aging. Figures — one can’t spit within the search results for anything Genertion X without hitting Douglas Coupland.

Anyhoo… I’ve always found this to be a curiuos subject because most of the time people mistake my age, often thinking that I am younger, sometimes much younger. This was particularly so in my late-twenties and early-thirties. By my late-thirties not so much. But since I’ve hit forty people are more often than not surprised when I tell them my age. Of course, this no doubt has as much to do with my juvenile personality than anything else.

It seems to me that Coupland’s attitude toward aging is indicative of the GenX attitude in general. That is, he doesn’t really mind aging so much because he understands that everyone else is aging right along with him. Sure, no one like aging but it is a fact of life and you either come to terms with it or spend your time foolishly wasting time and money trying to deny it, which seem more typical of Boomers. After all, they’re the ones that coined the phrase 60 is the new 40 blah blah blah. And they’re still doing it. I’ve heard 70 is the new 60. Please…

I’ve often thougth that GenXers will make not necessarily better but more graceful seniors than Boomers. For many of us it will be like a second go-around with our twenties — no job or only part time work in the service sector, lots of time on our hands to spend in places like Denny’s and the mall, and engaging in long, meandering cafeine-fueled conversations that are immensely interesting to us but to outsiders seemingly pretty dotty.

I predict that our music and clothes will be cool no matter what our age. And we sure as shit aren’t going to try and relive Lollapalooza; we’ll just let those younger than use have their turn. In case you’re not getting the hint Baby Boom your fucking Woodstock reunion was lame!

Anyway, the article is way more interesting than my blather, so check it!

*perhaps under different circumstances Generation X could have been dubbed the Irregular Genartion….or not.