Follow-Up Information about The Lousy Hour

Listen: I know that a lot of you (there are not actually a lot of you reading this if Google Analytics is to be trusted - and it is) did not like The Lousy Hour. I know that a couple of you (literally, like 2) said that you liked it because of Obligations You Have To Those Involved. I get that, Really. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth mentioning that last Friday my colleague stopped by the Desk I Get Paid To Sit Behind to give me a confusing object. I will describe this object: it is a MiniDV tape, the kind you would use in a pretty regular camcorder, only it had been spray painted gold, and a handwritten label that read "The Lousy Hour, Miles Donovan" had been put on the the tape. On the other side, written on the cardboard sleeve of the tape's case was "best sitcom, 07-08." I will not take a picture of it for you to see, sorry.

Apparently they came from one of the higher-ups at TUTV.

Listen: at first I thought it was an extremely silly thing, and to some degree I still do, for a few reasons: 1) the show is not a sitcom, 2) the show is not the best anything, and 3) the show was made in part as an act of self-serving vengeance for how poorly-received our previous project was, despite how hard we had worked on it. But now that I've thought about it for a while, I realize that it probably took someone a good 5 minutes to spray paint that tape, not to mention the 20 minutes and five plus dollars it no doubt took to buy the spray paint in the first place. They did that for us. That was nice of them. They were nice, even though we did a bad job. We got an award. That never happens in real life.

What Awful Thing Am I About To Subject You To?

Looks like That Guy and I did a thing of making a television show, again. I hate to be a person who makes the same mistake twice, but here I am. Regardless, feel free to watch it, it should appear below these words. It's called The Lousy Hour, and I promise that it lives up to its name in at least one capacity.

Here is How the Situation has Improved

I guess I owe the world some kind of apology, or at least a retraction. Maybe not the world, as it had very little to do with what’s happened, but you get the idea. You see, the Problem I informed you about on Wednesday has seen a kind of resolution. Thanks to the dutiful efforts of one AK, The Place is now thoroughly pumpkin’d. I plan on butchering sometime in the evening, but we all know how plans go. I know I should take occurrences like this one as evidence that the world is not a looming, terrible, monstrous place that is dead-set to ruin everything, so I will. This is called [some kind of] irony, and was all anybody wanted to write about in the nineties.

Information on my success or failure to craft a view-worthy jack o’lantern will be shared as it becomes available, though this coming weekend will be a time of little respite as zombie movies and this endeavor* devour the better part of my time. Also, like so much of the Mac-having, glasses-wearing, obesity-afflicted Internet I am excited for This in a way that poses substantial danger to my heart and capillaries.

*for more fun Information about this go Here.

Here is how that Conversation with My Brother Went

The other day I called my mom. This is not out of the ordinary, I try to talk to my parents once a week on the telephone. I have not seen them since January, and January was also the last time I saw my brother (whose existence is still contested by some of my friends, despite photographic evidence from multiple sources). My phone-call schedule with my brother is somewhat different from the one I have with my parents, which is to say I do not have one, meaning that I had not spoken to him since January (which is, if you’ll recall, when I last saw him as well as my parents), until I called my mom the other day. It seems that my brother is currently visiting my parents, though he will leave the day before I arrive in Ohio, meaning I will not see him. However, when I called my mom the other day she was in the car. With my brother. So she asked if I wanted to speak with him. So I did, and here is how that went:

Me: Hello.
Him: Hello.
(pause)
Him: Did you see “The Simpsons Movie?”
Me: Yes it was –
Him: [Interrupting] How was it? – oh sorry. what?
Me: It was good. I enjoyed it.
Him: So should I see it?
Me: Yeah.
Him: Okay.
(pause)
Me: Did you watch Lost this season?
Him: Yeah, that was pretty nuts.
Me: Yeah
Him: Who do you think is in the coffin? I’m thinking its -
Me: [interrupting] I’d say it’s Ben.
Him: Yeah.

It went about where you’d expect from there. He’s going to start his last year of law school this fall. What if my parents are more proud of him than they are of me even though I call them every week? I’m not too sure what to do about this. I’m not even sure who was in the coffin in the season finale of Lost.

Here is How I was Almost an Asshole Today

Another movie-related post. I will try to do something about Typewriters or the Bad Time I Had at the Apple Store soon, in order for there to be variation. Until then though, there's this.

As anyone who knows anything about the greater Boston is well aware, there is a lot of stuff to see between stops on the T, which is why walking everywhere is important (biking is not important because biking is a good way to get killed while operating a device that makes listening to music unsafe). Anyway, what’s relevant here is that there exists a video rental place on the stretch of Mass Ave between Harvard Square and Central Square, and I happened to pass by it on my walk to Kinkos.* The franchise has at least two other locations – one in Davis and one on Mass Ave between Porter and Harvard, if that was information you wanted to know. I am getting off track though.

I saw something as I passed by the video store (the one between Harvard and Central, not the one between Porter and Harvard). It was this poster, hanging in a window, surrounded by yellow “caution” tape. I looked at the poster, and I read the words on it, and I processed the words on it. Here is where things get troubling: somewhere, probably in some highly-evolved human-only bullshit region of my brain, the thought “go in there and rent that” occurred. Obviously the more basic, survival-first parts of my mind (everything in the brainstem for example) recoiled from this notion by dumping hormones and adrenaline into my blood. Digestion stopped, respiration increased, and my senses became heightened as my body dealt with this threat. But still, just for a second, part of me actually thought that it would be a good idea to watch David Lynch’s 3-plus hour movie about…I don’t even know what it’s about. That is not the information I requested. But look, I have reached a conclusion about all of this: while I strive to be a good person, and to live a decent life, I am on some level – however repressed or minimal – a terrible asshole. At my age the desire to watch a David Lynch movie without knowing anything about it makes one a terrible asshole.

I don’t want to turn this into a big whole thing about David Lynch, but I feel like I might have to in order to fully explain myself. Let’s first get one thing straight: I don’t enjoy Lynch’s movies the way I enjoy regular, designed-for-humans movies.** I tried to watch “Eraserhead” once when I was barely a high school student, and wound up being pretty badly harmed. In early 2006 I watched “Mullholland Drive” and was reasonably harmed. More recently I watched “Lost Highway” and was not harmed too badly, but then I watched all of “Eraserhead” and was really badly harmed. Despite all of this, I’ll probably watch “Blue Velvet” sometime soon and be harmed some amount, and God knows I'll get through all of Twin Peaks even if it kills me.

You’d think that, after all these seemingly bad experiences, I’d just give up on watching Lynch movies. But such is not the case. How is it that I am a moth and David Lynch movies are enormous, unshielded 60-watt light bulbs that I fly into? Why haven’t I learned anything from this? Maybe it’s something you grow into unwillingly, the way we look at our parents’ ways with disgust simply because we know that someday we will be like them, and it bothers us now. My dad loves Lynch movies. He also loves watching golf on TV and listening to NPR. Maybe someday I will love Lynch movies and these other things too, after I have lived long enough to hate everything that makes people happy, and to have given up on making sense out of the world. At that point it won’t matter though, will it?

*I went to Kinkos so that I could see about getting that skyline picture I told you about a few days ago printed in big, nice paper. The man at Kinkos was very helpful and it looks like Friday will see the existence of that Nice Print.

**There are two exceptions to this: "The Elephant Man" was good, and "The Straight Story" was very endearing and sweet. Neither of these movies involved cowboys being in two places at once or a baby who falls apart and makes a terrible mess.

A Short List of Things I Have in Common with Michael Emerson

We were both born in Iowa (neighboring towns, even)
We are both about 5'8''
Michael Emerson did freelance illustration for publications including The Boston Globe. I took a class on Adobe Illustrator in Boston.
Has appeared on both "The Practice" and "Lost." I have appeared in front of a TV while both of these shows were playing.

Michael Emerson has already won an Emmy, but I am going to go ahead and nominate him for a Best Dude Grammy. Congratulations, Mr. Emerson.

Here is that information about Michael Emerson you requested.