Well, I watched the final episode of Studio 60 last night.
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I love Aaron Sorkin. Love, love, love. I wept and gnashed my teeth when Sports Night was canceled. I adored The West Wing, and even kept watching after Sorkin’s departure, because I couldn’t bear to walk away from the characters and world he had created.
Studio 60 started out brilliantly. The pilot was fantastic, and I could not wait for the season to begin. Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry were great together as Danny and Matt.
The show, unfortunately, started to meander and lose its way. Was it a Very Serious Drama? Was it a comedy? It was hard to tell, and I don’t think Sorkin’s other shows suffered from this awkward tone problem. Both had a fine balance of humor and seriousness that Studio 60 never seemed to find.
When Studio 60 was good, it was really, really good. When it wasn’t though…well, it really, really wasn’t. I thought The Christmas Show was outstanding. I thought the one where Danny and Jordan got stuck on the roof was dreadful.
I’ve loved these last few episodes, though, and the finale made me cry multiple times. The finale reminded me why I love Mr. Sorkin so. Were things tied up a little too neatly? Well, yeah, but I can forgive that. Leave it to Aaron Sorkin to leave me desperately missing a show I was feeling “meh” about not all that long ago.
So goodbye, Studio 60. You weren’t perfect, but you will be missed.
Is it really Friday already? Is it really about to be July? How does this happen??
Sigh.
A quick report of the weekend…Rand and I attended Conterpoint in Rockville, Maryland. We could hardly pass up the opportunity to see Tony and Vixy, Seanan, and Wild Mercy all in one place! They were all fantastic, as were the other concerts.
Wild Mercy made me cry twice…once with their rendition of Hallelujah, and again with a new song that was basically that scene in Titanic, when the mom is telling a story to her kids to get them to go to sleep so they don’t realize they’re gonna die…except on a spaceship. Yeah. *sniff*
Jen, who plays harp and sings with Wild Mercy, has the cutest baby in the world. (yes, all babies are the cutest babies in the world…) Seriously, though…baby Maddie was so happy and content all weekend, even with hundreds of strange people about.
I’m sure there were a million things I wanted to say about the weekend, and maybe I’ll remember them at some point. 😉
I also managed to squeeze in a visit with my college friends Holly and Mary (and their families), who both live in Maryland.
We ate at the Cheesecake Factory, and I finally got to meet Mary and Holly’s children. It only took me three years to meet Holly’s!
Anyway, yay for time spent with friends, both old and new. 🙂
My friend Seanan is helping out a friend by donating sales of her live album Pretty Little Dead Girl. Here’s the whole story directly from Seanan:
A fire sale is what you have when the house is on fire and you need to get things out of it, right? ‘Here, buy my stuff before it gets smoke-damaged’. Well, a very good friend of mine has a house that’s on fire right now, and that means I’m having a fire sale to try to help her put it out.
For the next week, all proceeds of sales from my first album, Pretty Little Dead Girl, will be going straight to her and her family, to help them get through a rather nasty financial crunch — basically, she starts her new job in two weeks, but until then, there’s no money to do fun things like ‘feed the resident small child’ and ‘keep the electricity running’. If we can manage to sell forty copies of the album, at $15 a pop, we’ll raise six hundred dollars, and get them through this stupid speed bump.
To order Pretty Little Dead Girl and donate the proceeds, go to:
Put ‘fire sale’ in the comments field. We still have to charge postage (and the international order surcharge, for people outside the US), since I don’t have any money either, but all actual sale-of-CD proceeds will go straight to the donation pool. I’m probably going to do a few art sales or auctions to help this along, later in the week.
Please, feel free to repost this entry, modified as necessary, especially if you have a reading list that differs substantially from mine. The fire sale will run from Thursday, June 28, through Thursday, July 5.
Thank you.
Addendum: Because a few people have asked — if you want to contribute to the fire sale, but either don’t have $15, or don’t need another copy of Pretty Little Dead Girl, you can send non-CC PayPal directly to:
delirium at xocolatl dot com
For those of you who don’t know her, Seanan rocks. She’s an awesome person, and a brilliant songwriter, and, well, even if it weren’t for a good cause, you’d want to own her music.
When I came home yesterday, I was greeted by a big pile-o-boxes…which means that the new and improved Less Than Art 10th Anniversary Edition has arrived!
Rand is working on getting it up on CD Baby (at which point it will also be available on iTunes, I believe), but those of you who will see us this weekend will be able to have a copy in your little hands!
I’ve heard it, and it’s really, really good. All the songs are remixed and remastered from their original recordings, and they sound fantastic! 🙂
(For those unaware, Less Than Art is Ookla The Mok’s first album. It includes such classics as Home, Dollar Fifty Movies, Arthur Curry, and Tiberius Rising.)
Well, friends…it looks like the Save Veronica front is still alive and well! The folks at Ain’t It Cool News have put together this plea.
There’s an online petition, snail mail addresses of CW execs, a “Bars for Mars” campaign…and lots of other stuff.
I don’t think I need to talk any more about how much I love this show. I love this show. I’d love to see it get another season, even if it’s the future-set, retooled, Veronica goes to the FBI thing.
I was a fan of Buffy/Angel. I got into Buffy late, but with some coaching from my dear friend Stephanie, I was able to catch up. I watched Buffy faithfully through to the end, but missed the last season of Angel (scheduling conflicts).
I’d heard all the buzz about Joss Whedon’s new show, Firefly, but never did get the chance to see it when it was on the air. Partially because, as we all know, it didn’t last long, and partially because the premise didn’t sound all that appealing to me. (A Space Western? Really? Hmmm…)
Well, I finally watched it, and I’m SO glad I did. It seemed like everywhere we went, someone was telling Rand and me that we had to watch Firefly and we had to do it now. Recently, the series was selling on Amazon for cheap, so we picked it up. And since our regular season shows were dying down, we found the time to watch.
Reading: Current read is Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith, who so happens to be a sorority sister. Cool! I should finish that today.
Recently finished Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot, the first in her “Heather Wells Mysteries” series. As I’ve said many, many times, Meg Cabot is always a great read.
I also finished Coal Run by Tawni O’Dell. O’Dell writes stories that are set in the general area of PA where I grew up…not precisely where I grew up, but in the “hey, we played them in football” area. She writes really well about tragedy and dysfunction, creating flawed but utterly human characters.
Also continuing to read and enjoy Daredevil.
Watching: I finally watched the last few episodes of Veronica Mars that TiVo saved for me. I liked the last couple of episodes for an end to the season…but if the show doesn’t come back for another? (the CW is still dangling a shred of hope over our heads…) Then the last episode was unmercifully cruel. Bah.
Movies…I haven’t seen a new movie in the last little bit, but Rand and I watched This Film is Not Yet Rated over the weekend. It seems like we watched a whole bunch of stuff, but I’m having trouble remembering what…oh well.
Listening: As you may have noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a Dixie Chicks kick. TiVo recorded their appearance on Austin City Limits, which was pretty cool. I’m still loving “Taking the Long Way.” 🙂
During the summer of 1994, I was driving around the country teaching cheerleading to middle school and high school students. I worked for Elite Cheerleading Organization, based in Pittsburgh. The company sent us out around the country in groups of 2, 3, and sometimes 4.If you were lucky, you had someone in your group who was 21 or over. You got a nice, shiny, reliable rental car.
If you weren’t, you drove one of the “Elite Fleet.” These were crappy old used cars. IWewere warned about making sure the oil was always full, and told horror stories about what would happen if the oil leaked, drained, or burned away to empty.
The rental cars usually had cassette players in them. The Elite Fleet, well, you were lucky if the radio worked.
When the radio did work, we usually listened to the Top 40/pop stations. Because, well, it was the best compromise. And Top 40 stations are repetitive enough under ordinary circumstances, but y’know, we were driving across multiple states. That means switching the Top 40 station to a NEW one every time we lost the signal. And we were trapped. I mean, sure, sometimes we turned the radio off, and sometimes we got lucky…I remember one trip with a girl named Cindy. Our conversation went something like this:
Cindy: So, what do you want to listen to?
Me: Um, I dunno. Whatever.
Cindy (tentatively): Well, I kinda like…um...country.
Me: No way! Me too! Squee!
Not that we didn’t get sick of that eventually, too…but at least it was something different.
As a result, most of the songs that were on the radio that summer make me want to run screaming from the room. I browsed through the weekly charts from that summer to jog my memory. Here’s some of what I’m talking about:
All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow)
Fantastic Voyage (Coolio)
Here Comes the Hotstepper (Ini Kamoze)
I Swear (All 4 One)
I’ll Make Love to You (Boyz II Men)
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (Crash Test Dummies)
Wild Night (John Mellencamp)
Mr. Jones (Counting Crows)
Regulate (Warren G)
Shine (Collective Soul)
Baby I Love Your Way (Big Mountain)
Don’t Turn Around (Ace of Base)
Crazy (Aerosmith)
Round Here (Counting Crows)
Tootsee Roll (69 Boyz)
Now, whether or not I would have liked these songs under ordinary circumstances is irrelevant. Some songs from that summer didn’t stick with me…I can barely remember them. Others, I don’t mind so much. These, for whatever reason, have been burned into my brain until the end of time. That All 4 One version of I Swear? *shudder* 5 weeks at number one.
So, what songs have you wished would get sucked into a black hole of oblivion, never to be heard from again? 🙂
So, Lady Turpentine asked why I thought the documentary “Shut Up & Sing” was flawed, so here are my thoughts.
Like I said, it was interesting, and it succeeded in reminding me how much I like the Dixie Chicks. It did have a few problems though…it jumped around in time in ways that I found distracting. Also, it lost focus and meandered at times. Rand commented that it was more of a VH-1 documentary (minus the voice over), and I would agree with that.
Right after watching it, though, I went down to the basement into my boxes of CDs and brought out my Dixie Chicks albums. I went to iTunes and downloaded Taking the Long Way, and now I’m inspired to create a guide to the Dixie Chicks for anyone who might be interested in hearing what they have to offer other than “Not Ready to Make Nice.”
Wide Open Spaces (1998) was the Chicks’ first commercially succesful release. The title track won one of the country music awards, and the ladies impressed me by calling the songwriter to the stage to accept the award.
As is usually the case in Nashville, there is very little on this album written by the Chicks themselves, but their musical and vocal talent is clear.
Download me: Wide Open Spaces, I Can Love You Better, There’s Your Trouble, You Were Mine, Tonight the Heartache’s On Me
Fly (1999) allowed the girls a little bit more creative freedom. The song Cowboy Take Me Away, written by Emily Robison for her husband, is a sweet, touching love song. The girls got a lot of attention for numbers like Goodbye Earl, an upbeat, irreverent anthem about the murder of an abusive husband. (I don’t have access to YouTube at the moment, but I’d recommend checking out the video. It’s hilarious. Natalie Maines’ husband, Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar, makes a brief appearance as a police officer. ADDED–here’s the video)
I like this album a lot, so recommending songs is gonna be tough…
Download me: Goodbye Earl, Cowboy Take Me Away, If I Fall You’re Goin’ Down With Me, Cold Day in July, Let Him Fly
Home (2002) is a less polished “back to our roots” kind of album. The first track (and lead single ) Long Time Gone is an upbeat bluegrassy number. This is also the album that features the cover of Stevie Nicks’ Landslide, which I love on the album. There was a pop radio version that I found incredibly annoying. The other track I simply love from this album is Travelin’ Soldier, which is simply heartbreaking. It still makes me cry.
Download Me: Long Time Gone, Landslide, Travelin’ Soldier
Taking the Long Way (2006) is, of course, their current album. The Chicks worked with producer Rick Rubin, who you might remember was responsible for Johnny Cash’s last album. As I said yesterday, this album is personal, raw and emotional, and because of that, it’s beautiful. I’m only on my first or second listen to these songs, but those are my thoughts so far.
Download me: Not Ready to Make Nice, Taking the Long Way, Easy Silence, Lullaby
