From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #718 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, September 23 2008 Volume 16 : Number 718 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Stackenblocken ["Miles Goosens" ] Re: Stackenblocken [craigie* ] Re: Stackenblocken [Sebastian Hagedorn ] RE: Stackenblocken ["Bachman, Michael" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Jeremy Osner" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Jeremy Osner" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Miles Goosens" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Miles Goosens" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Miles Goosens" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Jeremy Osner" ] Re: Stackenblocken ["kevin studyvin" ] Re: Stackenblocken [2fs ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["Miles Goosens" ] Re: Stackenblocken ["Miles Goosens" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:15:47 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:26 AM, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: > --On 22. September 2008 13:28:42 -0400 "Bachman, Michael" > wrote: >> It's got a lot of >> X-Files tones in it's make-up. > > Tell me about it. But where X-Files worked, Fringe doesn't. Maybe it'll > improve (the X-Files took a season or two to really gel), but for now color > me unimpressed. I thought THE X-FILES was great out of the gate, and remained great for four seasons. But then the stupid continuing story/"mythology episodes" took over, and since Chris Carter could never figure out what the heck he wanted that story to be, the whole thing just became a mess. The quality of the writing went down, the scripts weren't as good, and after the show moved to LA, the photography, always a strong suit, wasn't even interesting any more. Plus Carter screwed G. Morgan and Wong after they turned MILLENNIUM into a great show during its second season (talk about your Darin Morgan scripts!), which also inhibited my appreciation of future Chris Carter projects... I haven't seen FRINGE yet, though having Darin Morgan aboard makes me want to. Last year, I had high hopes for THE BIONIC WOMAN (yes, seriously) because it had a BSG co-creator (i.e., cheesy '70s show gets remade into Best Show on Television) and, initially, the Brothers Morgan sans Wong. But as it turned out, the Morgans were off the project before the show even aired, and the show was pretty darn lousy, despite having Katee Sackhoff and Miguel Ferrar in the supporting cast. Actually, I just kept wishing the show was about Katee Sackhoff's character. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:36:28 +0100 From: craigie* Subject: Re: Stackenblocken yeah... Bionic Woman was a good idea on paper... but ultmately, with no sympathy forthcoming for the main character it was sadly doomed... And, yes KS's character was more rounded... (no pun intended) c* On 23/09/2008, Miles Goosens wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:26 AM, Sebastian Hagedorn > wrote: > > --On 22. September 2008 13:28:42 -0400 "Bachman, Michael" > > wrote: > >> It's got a lot of > >> X-Files tones in it's make-up. > > > > Tell me about it. But where X-Files worked, Fringe doesn't. Maybe it'll > > improve (the X-Files took a season or two to really gel), but for now > color > > me unimpressed. > > I thought THE X-FILES was great out of the gate, and remained great > for four seasons. But then the stupid continuing story/"mythology > episodes" took over, and since Chris Carter could never figure out > what the heck he wanted that story to be, the whole thing just became > a mess. The quality of the writing went down, the scripts weren't as > good, and after the show moved to LA, the photography, always a strong > suit, wasn't even interesting any more. Plus Carter screwed G. Morgan > and Wong after they turned MILLENNIUM into a great show during its > second season (talk about your Darin Morgan scripts!), which also > inhibited my appreciation of future Chris Carter projects... > > I haven't seen FRINGE yet, though having Darin Morgan aboard makes me > want to. Last year, I had high hopes for THE BIONIC WOMAN (yes, > seriously) because it had a BSG co-creator (i.e., cheesy '70s show > gets remade into Best Show on Television) and, initially, the Brothers > Morgan sans Wong. But as it turned out, the Morgans were off the > project before the show even aired, and the show was pretty darn > lousy, despite having Katee Sackhoff and Miguel Ferrar in the > supporting cast. Actually, I just kept wishing the show was about > Katee Sackhoff's character. > > later, > > Miles > - -- first things first, but not necessarily in that order... I like my girls to be the same as my records - independent, attractively packaged and in black vinyl (if at all possible)... Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc (the motto of the Addams Family: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us") ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:37:26 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: Stackenblocken - --On 23. September 2008 09:15:47 -0500 Miles Goosens wrote: > I thought THE X-FILES was great out of the gate, and remained great > for four seasons. But then the stupid continuing story/"mythology > episodes" took over, and since Chris Carter could never figure out > what the heck he wanted that story to be, the whole thing just became > a mess. The quality of the writing went down, the scripts weren't as > good, and after the show moved to LA, the photography, always a strong > suit, wasn't even interesting any more. Hm, I have to say that I'm only now watching the whole series. When it originally aired in Germany, I had nothing but contempt for it. That was because of general hubris on my part, a misunderstanding and the so-so dubbing. My main problem was that I was led to believe that the series was entirely serious, with everybody actually believing in the paranormal, UFOs etc. The mainstream German media portrayed it as part of an anti-intellectual, esoteric, occultist trend. Anyway, I only caught very few episodes at the time. A few years ago a friend bought season 1 and 2 on DVD and I really enjoyed them. But he didn't buy the other seasons and they were too expensive for my taste. For some reason I never downloaded them either. But now, after having seen the second movie, I noticed a great offer at amazon.co.uk and ordered the complete series, including the first movie, for only 90 Euros. Initially single seasons cost around that much! Currently I'm watching season 6. I agree that the move to LA hasn't improved the look, I agree that the mythology is a bit of a mess, but in general I don't think the writing has suffered. I loved many episodes from seasons 5 and 6 (so far)! Examples are: The Post-Modern Prometheus, Bad Blood, Drive, Triangle (it has its ups and downs), Dreamland I and II. Personally I don't think that the first two seasons were as strong. YMMV, obviously :-) - -- b. Sebastian Hagedorn b Hagedorn@spinfo.uni-koeln.de b' http://www.uni-koeln.de/~a0620/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:46:07 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Stackenblocken - -----Original Message----- From: owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org [mailto:owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Miles Goosens Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 10:16 AM To: fegmaniax Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:26 AM, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: > --On 22. September 2008 13:28:42 -0400 "Bachman, Michael" > wrote: >>> It's got a lot of >>> X-Files tones in it's make-up. >> >> Tell me about it. But where X-Files worked, Fringe doesn't. Maybe >> it'll improve (the X-Files took a season or two to really gel), but >> for now color me unimpressed. Miles came back with: >I thought THE X-FILES was great out of the gate, and remained great for four seasons. But then the stupid >continuing story/"mythology episodes" took over, and since Chris Carter could never figure out what the heck he >wanted that story to be, the whole thing just became a mess. The quality of the writing went down, the scripts >weren't as good, and after the show moved to LA, the photography, always a strong suit, wasn't even interesting >any more. Plus Carter screwed G. Morgan and Wong after they turned MILLENNIUM into a great show during its >second season (talk about your Darin Morgan scripts!), which also inhibited my appreciation of future >Chris Carter projects... I'll agree with Miles on this mostly, although I thought season two was better then season one and then it peaked in season three and remained strong in season four and most of the episodes in season five. The photography really did suffer when the show moved to LA. Twin Peaks managed the location shift from Snoqualmie and North Bend, WA were the pilot were was filmed, to LA were all the regular season episodes were shot. It helped a lot that Lynch and the subsequent directors had second unit shots of the Snoqualmie and North Bend area that were always included in the regular season episodes. Michael B. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:41:59 -0700 (PDT) From: dolphmusic@yahoo.com Subject: RE: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons Yesterday, I posted an autumnal equinox playlist at my blog -- . Some overlap with the Onion list. - -Dolph ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:20:11 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: > My main problem was that I was led to believe that the series was > entirely serious, with everybody actually believing in the paranormal, UFOs > etc. The mainstream German media portrayed it as part of an > anti-intellectual, esoteric, occultist trend. That's really odd, that it would be portrayed as some sort of social menace or a '90s CHARIOTS OF THE GODS. > Currently I'm watching season 6. I agree that the move to LA hasn't improved > the look, I agree that the mythology is a bit of a mess, but in general I > don't think the writing has suffered. I loved many episodes from seasons 5 > and 6 (so far)! Examples are: > > The Post-Modern Prometheus, Bad Blood, Drive, Triangle (it has its ups and > downs), Dreamland I and II. Some of the post-S4 episodes are quite enjoyable to me - usually (this should come as no surprise) the monster-of-the-week ones. But overall, I spent those years hoping that the show would right itself, that the confuse-o mythology would coalesce into something, especially given how much time they were devoting to it at that point. And they'd earned a lot of trust from me after those great early seasons, so I kept watching well past the point of actual entertainment. I remember my half-joking assessment after S1 of MILLENNIUM was that MILLENNIUM needed a continuing story, and THE X-FILES needed not to have one. S2 of MILLENNIUM fixed that in a big way, and might be my favorite season of any Carter product (with the first four X-FILES seasons and the underrated LONE GUNMEN right behind)... but the parent show never did get its mojo back. If I had to redo the continuing story of THE X-FILES, hm... actually, during the first few seasons, that aspect was very promising, but it was way more attractive when it seemed like the "alien" part of the conspiracy/cover-up might actually be 100% human, some sort of Cold War experiments gone out of control, no actual aliens involved. The S2 finale, "Anasazi," clearly points that way, with Mulder saying on that last desperate phone call from the buried boxcar that the "alien" bodies are human. Carter himself said in early interviews that we would never see an alien on the show, but that went the way of, say, Metallica's promise never to make a music video. > Personally I don't think that the first two seasons were as strong. YMMV, > obviously :-) Such is the beauty of life. :) I'm still fascinated that folks can dislike GROOVY DECAY and like SPOOKED, but I learn from hearing those other viewpoints, and always appreciate how well-stated they usually are here on Feg. And sometimes I even change my mind because of y'all. Really! :) I don't think BUFFY's last season will ever be redeemed for me, though. I was recently thinking about the whole BUFFY/ANGEL run again, maybe because of the thread here on the comic, and at this point I'm thinking ANGEL was the superior show. I mean, both were superawesomely great overall, but it's all because ANGEL just f'in nailed it in its last few episodes, whereas BUFFY spent S7 in that weirdo torpor. Very little from the middle-chaptery build of S6 paid off, and everyone just talked and futzed about so much that I thought maybe the show had changed its name to _twentysomething_. I spent the last couple of months of the show saying to the TV, "why am I having to watch Buffy and Spike have the umpteenth conversation about why they're bad for each other? Why is Anya pointlessly bonding with Andrew? Don't they know that they only have [fill in the number] episodes left?" To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs, shows are better when stuff happens. Sometimes I wonder if the show's braintrust thought they might get Sarah Michelle Gellar to re-up at the last minute, even though the entire rest of the universe knew she was leaving. Otherwise, I'm at a total loss for why they chose to fritter away S7 in such blah fashion. I used to think if I could redo one series' last season, it would have been ST. ELSEWHERE's (characters becoming caricatures and that awful conceit that the show had all gone on inside the autistic kid's head), but nah, it's BUFFY that I'd pick. If I get two trips on the time machine, I'll do both, though. And help the Asian father/daughter combo win last season's AMAZING RACE. Oh, and maybe do something about that pesky US presidential election in 2000. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:45:02 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Miles Goosens wrote: > If the official answer ever becomes "yes," it'll be ELEMENT OF LIGHT > that benefits most, as the original four CD bonus tracks ("The Black > Crow Knows," "The Leopard," "The Crawling," and "Tell Me About Your > Drugs") are all wonderful, especially "The Crawling." That coda is > the shizznet. > This is very true: OTOH the two alternate mixes added to EoL for the box set reissue blow. ("Bass" and "Lady Waters".) The CD would be much better with these two omitted and nothing in their place, though of course there may be better things they could be replaced with. To me EoL is very much an LP: the first side of the record and the second side of the record have their own distinct arcs and something is taken away a little by running them together on a CD and adding bonus tracks. In this case the bonus tracks are good enough to make up for that and more. Ah but: to me the JfS extras are not bonus trax because I'm listening to JfS for the first time... I can see how it should end with the title track though. J - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:46:23 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia Oops: I replied to this message quoting only part of it, but the original had not gone out to all the fegz. Here it is: On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Miles Goosens wrote: > On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 7:46 AM, Jeremy Osner wrote: >>and "Mr. Tongs" which I am >> finding more problematic. It seems like a bunch of verses in search of >> a chorus maybe? Like I keep thinking "Dude, bust out the guitars >> already!" which makes me think I'm acting like a frat boy, which is >> not a pleasant response to have to a song if you get my drift... I >> like the transition from "Mr. Tongs" to "Gene Hackman" a lot, if "Mr. >> Tongs" only lasted for like half a minute and then they broke out >> laughing into "Gene Hackman" that would be fine. > > While I'm doing thread catch-up... I had totally forgotten "Mr. Tongs" > and momentarily thought that Jeremy must have some recent reissue with > bonus tracks or something. "Gene Hackman" was the only hidden track I > remembered. Well, of course "Mr. Tongs" is on my copy, just like > everybody else's... > > ...but my point, and I do have one, is that I don't even count it or > "Gene Hackman" because they're so clearly extras. > > I know we've had the "do bonus tracks count?" discussion on Feg > before, probably starting with me wondering why people were talking > about "My Favourite Buildings" in assessing IODOT. My vote is usually > 'no," and to link up with another recent-ish thread, I'm one of those > people who thinks "Wafflehead" would be a perfectly fine b-side/bonus > track/reissue bonus track/unhatched crabling, but who winces at it as > RESPECT's finale. "Bright Fresh Flower" instead, please. > > If the official answer ever becomes "yes," it'll be ELEMENT OF LIGHT > that benefits most, as the original four CD bonus tracks ("The Black > Crow Knows," "The Leopard," "The Crawling," and "Tell Me About Your > Drugs") are all wonderful, especially "The Crawling." That coda is > the shizznet. > > have you got it baby, flesh and blood?, > > Miles > - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:53:13 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Jeremy Osner wrote: > Oops: I replied to this message quoting only part of it, but the > original had not gone out to all the fegz. Yeah, in the meantime, I'd realized my mistake. Second time I've done that today, sent to the individual instead of the list. So now the list gets it twice! Take that, list! Thanks for the assist, though, and to Seb, who realized my mistake in that other thread. Seb and I self-corrected it back on-list promptly, for better or worse. re: the not-on-list goofs, I think it's because I'm using Gmail now... I'm totally in favor of "reply-to" going to the individual, since that usually helps private correspondence private, so I'm not complaining. In fact, as an ostensible smoe.org listowner, I've fought for keeping things that way. I'm just used to the "reply to all" being handier in Earthlink Webmail and Eudora, so it's totally an small interface learning curve thing. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:47:51 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 7:46 AM, Jeremy Osner wrote: >and "Mr. Tongs" which I am > finding more problematic. It seems like a bunch of verses in search of > a chorus maybe? Like I keep thinking "Dude, bust out the guitars > already!" which makes me think I'm acting like a frat boy, which is > not a pleasant response to have to a song if you get my drift... I > like the transition from "Mr. Tongs" to "Gene Hackman" a lot, if "Mr. > Tongs" only lasted for like half a minute and then they broke out > laughing into "Gene Hackman" that would be fine. While I'm doing thread catch-up... I had totally forgotten "Mr. Tongs" and momentarily thought that Jeremy must have some recent reissue with bonus tracks or something. "Gene Hackman" was the only hidden track I remembered. Well, of course "Mr. Tongs" is on my copy, just like everybody else's... ...but my point, and I do have one, is that I don't even count it or "Gene Hackman" because they're so clearly extras. I know we've had the "do bonus tracks count?" discussion on Feg before, probably starting with me wondering why people were talking about "My Favourite Buildings" in assessing IODOT. My vote is usually 'no," and to link up with another recent-ish thread, I'm one of those people who thinks "Wafflehead" would be a perfectly fine b-side/bonus track/reissue bonus track/unhatched crabling, but who winces at it as RESPECT's finale. "Bright Fresh Flower" instead, please. If the official answer ever becomes "yes," it'll be ELEMENT OF LIGHT that benefits most, as the original four CD bonus tracks ("The Black Crow Knows," "The Leopard," "The Crawling," and "Tell Me About Your Drugs") are all wonderful, especially "The Crawling." That coda is the shizznet. have you got it baby, flesh and blood?, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:58:38 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia I said: > so it's totally an small interface > learning curve thing. Argh! Article! Not my day. I blame the (supremely great) David Byrne concert last night. I'm also sure that goof originated in one of my most common editing mistakes, failing to clean up a revision. The phrase was most likely once "a small learning curve," and then I added "interface" without updating the "a(n)." Computers, for me, are mostly a blessing re: composition, but the mistake above is something I would have never committed on a Selectric. :) later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:11:21 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Miles Goosens wrote: > Argh! Article! Not my day. I blame the (supremely great) David > Byrne concert last night. Cool, the new album? I was thinking about going to see that show. He is performing (weirdly) in Red Bank, NJ, but not, last I checked, in NYC. J - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:19:38 -0700 From: "kevin studyvin" Subject: Re: Stackenblocken > To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs, shows are better when stuff happens. Joe Bob rocks. The website's pretty spotty & thin on the ground these days but I still regard Joe Bob Goes To the Drive-In as one of the high points of contemporary American cultural critique. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:19:40 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On 9/23/08, Miles Goosens wrote: > > > Some of the post-S4 episodes are quite enjoyable to me - usually (this > should come as no surprise) the monster-of-the-week ones. But > overall, I spent those years hoping that the show would right itself, > that the confuse-o mythology would coalesce into something, especially > given how much time they were devoting to it at that point. And > they'd earned a lot of trust from me after those great early seasons, > so I kept watching well past the point of actual entertainment. This is among the areas where Miles and I are quite simpatico - I can't recall what happened in which season (we're rewatching X-Files, too - just started S3), but I know I became increasingly frustrated...to the extent that I ultimately did something I rarely, rarely do: abandon a show I'd built up years of enjoyment on before it was actually canceled. Most of the last season of X-Files remains unwatched by me - and when I decided I would watch the finale, that was such a freaking mess I'm glad I hadn't been watching. I remember my half-joking assessment after S1 of MILLENNIUM was that > MILLENNIUM needed a continuing story, and THE X-FILES needed not to > have one. S2 of MILLENNIUM fixed that in a big way, and might be my > favorite season of any Carter product (with the first four X-FILES > seasons and the underrated LONE GUNMEN right behind)... but the parent > show never did get its mojo back. Another vote for _Lone Gunmen_ (and not just for quite spookily anticipating 9/11 in several details) - and Millennium too. Also: MM S3 isn't as bad as everyone says. Nowhere near as good as S2 and lacking the peaks of S1 - but definitely had its moments. > > I don't think BUFFY's last season will ever be redeemed for me, > though. I was recently thinking about the whole BUFFY/ANGEL run > again, maybe because of the thread here on the comic, and at this > point I'm thinking ANGEL was the superior show. I mean, both were > superawesomely great overall, but it's all because ANGEL just f'in > nailed it in its last few episodes, whereas BUFFY spent S7 in that > weirdo torpor. Very little from the middle-chaptery build of S6 paid > off, and everyone just talked and futzed about so much that I thought > maybe the show had changed its name to _twentysomething_. I liked Buffy's finale, though. More recently: While I liked almost every episode of all three seasons of _Veronica Mars_ (another one we just watched on DVD, although for us this was an initial viewing rather than repeat), (the consensus is that the show declined after its first season: it did, but not by much and was still way entertaining)*, its second season finale is anathema to me. In my mind, the identity of the season-long villain in that episode, and that villain's motivations and actions, are almost entirely implausible and mostly out-of-character both with how that character had previously been constructed and with the new aspects of identity revealed in that episode. My theory is that it originally aired on an April 1st, and producer Rob Thomas just never let on. I've simply excised it from my mental canon of the show. *Sorry 'bout that syntax - I edited and don't have time to do it better... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:32:03 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Jeremy Osner wrote: > On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Miles Goosens wrote: >> Argh! Article! Not my day. I blame the (supremely great) David >> Byrne concert last night. > > Cool, the new album? I was thinking about going to see that show. He > is performing (weirdly) in Red Bank, NJ, but not, last I checked, in > NYC. The tour is "Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno," so it's wholly drawn from the new one, MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS, FEAR OF MUSIC, SONGS FROM THE CATHERINE WHEEL, and REMAIN IN LIGHT. Well, except for last night where the final two songs were Webb Pierce's "There Stands the Glass" (also played at the Ryman 2004 show) and Hank Sr.'s "Half As Much," but that's likely a Nashville-only thing. Anyway, the set is a very good mix of new and old, and I imagine both casual and ardent fans will come away pleased. Every time I see Byrne solo (this was my 4th show), I come away thinking that he's totally underrated as a guitarist. It was great to see him and/or the keyboard player make Adrian Belew's absence (Belew lives in nearby Mt. Juliet, so I always kinda hope he'll guest - 0 for 4 on Nashville shows so far though) a non-issue on the solos on "Houses in Motion" and "The Great Curve." Last night at the Ryman, I was sort of wondering how many people there were also at Jason & the Scorchers' gig last Thursday after they were honored at the Americana Association Honors & Awards, and how many folks enjoyed both shows equally like I did? The Scorchers are my pick for Greatest Live Act Ever (in fact, their Lifetime Achievement award was for live performance), and they're both kick-ass *and* smart. But the Scorchers fanbase, at least as represented online, seems largely hostile to Byrne and his artsy book-larnin'. The Scorchers actually opened for Talking Heads at Vanderbilt in the early '80s, and the Scorchers got booed, so maybe there's a specific longterm antipathy there. Anyway, while watching the dance component of the Byrne show, I was imagining the Scorchers' fans' reaction to the dance component... but I live in both worlds and love them equally. And lest I be representing myself as a special little snowflake, I think Rex would be right there with me on this. Right, Rex? Rex? later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:51:51 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Stackenblocken Jeff: > Also: MM S3 isn't as bad as > everyone says. Nowhere near as good as S2 and lacking the peaks of S1 - but > definitely had its moments. I still need to watch it again, now that I'm not as pissed off about the Morgan/Wong axing and the furious backtracking to undo/explain away large chunks of S2. Or maybe I'll get pissed off all over again. We'll see. > I liked Buffy's finale, though. I liked it and didn't like it. Certainly the in-show discussion of Buffy-as-trapped-by-Slayerness and the larger implications for youth/gender/etc. had always been there, and there was something about her choice at the end that I liked... but it also seemed more heavy-handed than I expected. I'm not quite getting the words right. But then again, I don't think they did either. > More recently: While I liked almost every episode of all three seasons of > _Veronica Mars_ (another one we just watched on DVD, although for us this > was an initial viewing rather than repeat), (the consensus is that the show > declined after its first season: it did, but not by much and was still way > entertaining)*, I'll dissent somewhat: First season gets 4 1/2 stars / A- / whatever, and the other two seasons progressively decline. S2 is still way entertaining but has a needlessly huge and complicated plot, and even in its first episode, asks us to believe stuff about the characters that goes against the way the characters developed, wholly reeking of Plot Extender(TM), not to mention what you said about the finale. I kept hoping that S3, with Veronica in college, would refresh the show, but... well... it became even less interesting, practically squandering Logan and, reminiscent of the show to which it was most often compared, doing middle-chaptery futzing about when it needed to pull out all the stops. Dunno, it just never was as smart and savvy as it was that first year. I'm not sure that a 4th season (or a completed 3rd) of VM would have been any help, but then again, I thought LOST had jumped the now-proverbial shark after sucking for all of S2 and the first two thirds of S3, but it got its act together big time, finally. Once again, CF: "Shows are better when stuff happens." Think the other Rob Thomas was running the show? :) I liked Logan so much that I actually suffered through a couple of episodes of MOONLIGHT just to see Jason Dohring in another role, but they seemed bent on squandering him too... plus the whole thing seemed so ANGEL-lite... later, Miles ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #718 ********************************