Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 49

Blast from the Past

Just a reminder: This was the high-water mark of the Romney campaign.

It’s Arrested. Development.

This bit of genius is courtesy of Galley Friend A.K. and not to belabor the obvious, but to really get it you have to click on the gags.

That said, I don’t know about you, but I’m really, really nervous about the new Netflixed Arrested Development.

When Santino hasn’t been getting fan-mail from Chrissy Teigen, making astute points about the state of the post-Seinfeld TV landscape, causing trouble by positing that Hillary! and Obama are in a Prisoners’ Dilemma, or catching the New York Times referring to murdered newborns as “fetuses”–can you tell that he’s been on an unbelievable hot-streak?–he’s been trying to calm the troubled hearts of AD fanboys who were alarmed by how un-funny the Arrested Development trailer was.

Santino’s point is that AD is such a coherent whole that very little of the show is funny by itself–you need the entire tapestry for any one thread to stand out. As such, no preview trailer is really going to sizzle.

He’s right about that. Even the show’s absolute funniest moments–”I have Pop-Pop in the attic.” “Get rid of the Seaward.” “I’m all grown up now.”–aren’t all that great until you know what’s both before and after them, thanks to Mitch Hurwitz’s brilliant use of call-forwards.

That said, what worries me isn’t that the trailer and preview clip aren’t funny. It’s that the feel of them is different.

What do I mean by feel? The pacing of the dialogue is different; the sensibility of the set; whatever audio filter they’re using on Ron Howard’s voiceover; even the bumper music has been altered. It’s all just slightly off.

Networks impose a tonal sensibility on the production of their shows. If you have never seen them before, or heard anything about them, I could show you episodes of 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, Fringe, and Desperate Housewives and you would know instantly that these were shows aired by NBC, CBS, Fox, and ABC. (Of the networks, I’d argue that ABC has the least obvious house branding.) The production tone of these shows constitutes something like a watermark designating their network of origin.

What worries me about the Netflixed AD is that it looks like that watermark has been changed. All change is bad, obviously. But any change to a show that courted perfection worries me because it suggests that if the overall aesthetic was deemed malleable–why futz with the great bumper music except to scream, “Netflix OWNS this now and Netflix is DIFFERENT”?–then other parts of the production might have been, too.

Honestly, I hope this is all just nerd Kremlinology and that next October, when I’ve finally finished the new season, I’ll be as overjoyed as I was at the end of the first three. But if nothing else, I’d suggest people tamp down their expectations the slightest bit.

My Gift to You: Caitrin Nicol on Elephants

I keep gushing about The New Atlantis because it’s one of the best journals being published right now. But it’s time to up the superlatives:

The Spring 2013 issue is the finest edition of the magazine yet.

And this magisterial piece by Caitrin Nicol–“Do Elephants Have Souls”–isn’t just the best thing they’ve ever run. It goes straight into my clip file as one of the most wonderful essays I’ve ever read.

It’s 60 pages. It’s about elephants. And it’s amazing.

Print. Enjoy. And for the love of all that’s holy, just subscribe already.

World of Warcraft Cautionary Note

So World of Warcraft is in pretty big trouble. In the first quarter of 2013 the game lost 1.3 million of its 9.3 million subscribers–a drop of 14 percent in three months. That’s not a dip; it’s a hemorrhage.

This isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. WoW is the most successful MMORPG in the history of the industry, but it never had more than 10 million subscribers at its peak.

Yet it’s a nice little reminder that class-leading entities which dominate purely by scale don’t necessarily live forever. Especially if the good or service they provide is completely non-essential.

In totally unrelated news, how’s Facebook Home doing? Oh.

Big Weekend for “What To Expect”

First, Galley Crush Mitch Daniels mentioned the book during his commencement speech at Purdue.

Then CBS Sunday Morning featured it in a big package on the child-free life. Video below:

It’s a long piece, but if you hang in there to the end, there’s a first-ever mention (and picture) of Galley Kid #1.

Also, Tracy Smith = Awesome. How awesome? Mitch Daniels levels of awesome. For reals.

Boston and the Left

This story is an instant classic:

The secret transport of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body from Worcester to a small community near Richmond, Va., was set in motion by a woman who said she was upset to hear about protests to his burial and wanted to see an end to the weeklong burial saga.

Martha Mullen, 48, of Richmond, said she was dismayed reports of protests outside of Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester that she heard on National Public Radio.

Of course she heard about it on NPR  . . .

Mullen, a licensed professional counselor who has lived in Richmond for most of her life, said she was sitting in a Starbucks Tuesday when it hit her: She could be the one to end the controversy.

. . . and is a professional “counselor” . . . and was meditating at a Starbucks. If this was an Onion story it would be too on-the-nose.

But the best is this part:

“It portrayed America at its worst,” she said in an interview with the Globe this morning.

Really? Peaceful picketing of a private business to encourage them to behave in a certain way is America at its worst? What the protestors did to Boston-area funeral homes isn’t any different than what liberal groups have done to, say, conservative talk radio shows like Dr. Laura, when they ask businesses not to advertise. Or to Chipotle, when they bullied it into revoking its sponsorship of a Boy Scout event. Liberals normally like “direct action.” Heck, they invented it.

But let’s take Mullen on her own terms: If picketing a funeral home to get them to pass on the job of burying a terrorist is “America at its worst,” where would Mullen rank Japanese-American internment during WWII? Or the Trail of Tears? How about Jim Crow? Bueller? Bueller?

And if that’s not bad enough, let’s close out this pathetic vignette with a quote from Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, the organization that Mullen found to take custody of Tsarnaev’s remains and bury them:

“What Tsarnaev did is between him and God. We strongly disagree with his violent actions, but that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth,” an Islamic Funeral Services of Virgina official, who did not want to be named, said in a statement.

You see, what Tsarnaev did is not just between him and God. He didn’t look at porn or cheat on his wife. He committed a public act of mass murder in the name of a religious ideology. God has final say over the disposition of Tsarnaev’s eternal soul and all that, but Caesar–which is to say, the society against which Tsarnaev committed this crime–has a clear and compelling interest, too.

Oh, and by the way, it’s pretty big of Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia to “strongly disagree” with Tsarnaev’s “violent actions.” I know what you’re thinking: “Strong disagreement” is normally what we have in disputes over, say, immigration policy or a presidential election and ideologically-motivated mass murder probably warrants something a little higher up the condemnation scale.

But hey: At least they didn’t say “his alleged violent actions.”

White House Huddles with Media About Benghazi

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard about something like this: The White House is having a terrible week because their on the wrong end of a story they can’t control. So they call in a select group of reporters to talk on “deep background.”

Is this like when a sports team on a losing streak and ostentatiously convenes a “players only meeting” so everyone can get on the same page?

“What to Expect”–Unrated Director’s Cut

I knew about Singapore’s “National Night,” but boy, do I wish I’d seen this before the book was published:

 

Get Your New “New Atlantis”

The latest issue of The New Atlantis is out and I’m reminded again of how bad-ass this magazine is. Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT Technology Review, calls it the “best conservative publication in America.”

True dat. For my money, it’s one of the three best journals being published. Full-stop.

If you’re not splurging for the $24 a year to subscribe, you’re cheating yourself.

PSA

The CGC just announced that they’ve modified their grading policy on comics which have had some cellophane tape applied to them. I don’t want to oversell this, but it just might blow. Your. Mind.