Slumber party!

I'm not ashamed to admit I borrowed the entire Felicity boxset from a female friend and watched them all. Granted, I watched them all with my girlfriend at the time, but I'm not going to deny enjoying every minute of it. Those who know me also are aware of my undying loyalty to Party of Five, My So Called Life and perhaps to a lesser extent, 90210 and Melrose Place.

My question, moreso in regards to the first few examples, is what has happened to the serialized drama on television these days? There are no more hour-long shows devoted to growing up, friendship, life, love and, in the case of Felicity, wiccan dimensional travel to alternate realities.

Every show on television these days has to have a gimmick. Even the best dramas currently airing (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Dexter) are inherently based on a circumstance. The characters are well developed, but the narrative is by far the backbone of all those shows. Mad Men may be an exception I suppose, but that isn't really a drama as it is watching a high society train wreck with sordid candor.

The only heir to the serialized-young-adult drama is Friday Night Lights, which, surprise surprise, I also adore. But despite surviving into season 4, it still suffers dismal ratings. It's the same mysterious fate that befell MSCL, and I've never figured out why Felicity and Po5 became cultural behemoths instead. My theory would naturally be that shows that are too real aren't escapist enough. MSCL was borderline depressing at times, but to be fair, as much as Felicity entertained in that now familiar JJ Abrams fashion, Po5 at times hit pretty hard too. I mean, it starts with a family losing their parents in a car crash.

I find these "chick shows" (full emphasis on air quotes there) to be some of the better written products on television solely because they are character driven, and can't resort to gimmicky plots without being called out on it. Unlike a show like Lost or BSG where things can be made up on the fly, the believability and reliability of characters is the most important facet in the writing. This, as a result, almost always leads to good television.

I didn't want this to be yet another 'watch FNL' post (which you should). Rather, I'm curious why this formula isn't attempted more often. Certainly the difficulty in pulling it off and maintaining an interesting set of characters and plot developments is time consuming compared to an arc about serial killers that certainly must come to a predictable end. Writing life empathetically is one of the toughest things to do.

Throw me in with the emotastic tween demographic if you will -- well crafted teenage girl drama is bar none always the most engrossing form of television. Respect.

Eight boy bands you have probably forgotten

Disclaimer -- for those of you who are banned from viewing YouTube videos at work, this will be a disappointing post unless you come back on your own time. Slackers.

Remember high school? It was good times. "Home work", part-time jobs, melodrama and skipping classes. But do you remember the soundtrack to all that?

In hindsight, trawling through popular music during that five year era is a veritable pantheon of pablum. Or more bluntly, it was a barren wasteland of musical talent. Think about what high school kids listen to today: Beyonce? Jay-z? Kanye? Panic at the Disco? Fall Out Boy?

These are actual BANDS! Artists! Compared to that, some of the crap being peddled to us in high school was downright absurd. I'm not bitter though, because at the very least it helps our generation identify with a completely unique era in pop-culture history. Morbid as it may be.

Sure, we all remember it as a time when boy bands (and to a lesser extent, girl bands and a seven member co-ed band) ruled the world. And yes, the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync are still to this day remembered somewhat fondly and with nostalgic relevance.

But what about all those other boy bands? I figured it'd be fun to take a stroll down memory lane. You probably have forgotten all these songs. Until now. I apologize, but... really. This stuff was popular once? It's a post that really just writes itself. Enjoy.

2gether

Technically, I think these guys were a a television show and not an actual band. Also, they were created to make fun of boy bands. Ironically, in their irony, they were one of my favourite boy bands.

3deep

Even 2gether had 2 hit songs. 3deep, despite being numerically superior, had only one. That's how bad they were. Even when it comes to bad music, Canada had an inferiority complex. Mostly, I remember wanting to start a band called 4shallow, just to show them up. That is all.

B44

Not only is the song incredibly perverted, but the three dudes look like child molesters in training, suffering from scurvy. Also, doesn't it seem implicitly racist to portray a black child playing with toys from a garbage can on the street? Either he's poor, or hallucinating from tainted meth. Perverts AND bigots. Yikes.

5ive

I only included them because they completed my pattern and also happened to be a one hit wonder. I only regret there wasn't a band with the number one in its name. I couldn't find the real video, which I recall takes place in a bowling alley

O-town

Created from the 'Making of the Band' tv show, their most popular song was one originally made famous by Westlife... another boy band. But Westlife was British, so apparently they don't count, and it's OK to pooch their act. BSB purists note: this is essentially the 'Get Down' video, except with less colour.

LFO

Stands for Lyte-Funky-Ones. References include Abercrombie, Footloose and... Family Ties?? There's no way they wrote this song. They can't possibly know who Alex Keaton is. It's actually pretty meta that they sing about that time back when New Kids on the Block was popular. One day, I am sure, no one will ever write a song about when LFO was popular.

The Moffats

I actually saw them live once. They were doing a gig at Playdium while I happened to be there. To be fair to them, at least these kids played instruments and wrote songs. They were just really bad. One of the brothers ended up in a band with one of my university friends' friend doing some sort of prog-rock thing in Boston. No, really.

Dudez A-Plenti

To anyone who thinks Andy Sanberg is original, I present exhibit A: Conan was pulling that shit way before that Natalie Portman stealing asshole wrote Lazy Sunday. To be honest though, Lazer Cats is some sort of epic bad assness. Props where deserved.

Dudez a-Plenti

I dedicate this post in loving memory of the YTV Hitlist.

Toaster Origins

I just watched the two-hour Caprica movie, a pilot/new spin-off series from the makers of Battlestar Galactica.

Not wanting to spoil anything, I will simply say that although it is much more drama than sci-fi, it certainly retains the pathos of BSG, down to the grittiness (sometimes a forced grittiness. I mean, it's filmed in Vancouver.) as well as heaps of spiritual and moral ambiguity. Also, there are some robots and science and yadda yadda, but these shows have never really been about that.

Suffice to say, it was entertaining, particularly because it really does delve deeply into the BSG backstory, and provides revealing and intriguing complexities to fans about the show's mythology. I know that somewhere the makers said it wasn't directly tied to BSG, and I suppose technically it isn't; but I am almost certain that the mere shared idiosyncrasies that go into making it an authentic prequel will attract many, many BSG fans. I'll probably end up watching it for mainly those reasons -- it's fairly interesting.

On an unrelated note, at one point in the movie, a question is asked in the middle of a conversation and the reply is preceded with a long-winded contextual story. I know this is a common narrative tool, but I am trying to figure out when (if?) any human being ever actually talks like this in real life.

For example, if somebody asked you "If you could have any super power, which would you choose?" I'd imagine the majority surveyed would pause, think, then simply say "[insert power] because [insert rationale]". This is how normal people think right?

But not in entertainment land.

In a script, that same question is answered like this:

Person 1: "What super power would you have?"

Person 2: "You know, once when I was eight years old, my parents used to have this old shotgun that they kept at the top of their closet -- you know, for protection and such. They must have figured that I couldn't reach that high, or didn't know about it, or hell, they might have even forgot they had it.

I was climbing up their bookshelf one day when they were outside gardening, and I saw the barrel just peeking out from across the room. I pushed a chair over and managed to get it down from the rack... it was the first time I ever held a gun. I could barely hold the thing straight... somehow, I managed to sneak it outside, and I started to just pretend shoot things, like I was the coolest kid in the world you know? Just pointing it at birds and... thinking bang. bang. bang. Cars flying by on the road. Eventually I couldn't help myself. The curiosity was killing me. I aimed straight at this bird perched on one of the fence posts near our house, it couldn't have been more than 10 feet away. And I pulled the trigger -- I remember it being so hard to pull.

That bird just exploded. It went up in a ball of feathers, and the blast kicked back and almost took my shoulder off. I remember my parents running around the corner of the house, their eyes so wide open screaming what was going on... I could see them, and their mouths were moving, but my ears were just ringing from the blast. It was so loud, I didn't even know where I was for a little bit... and I remember looking at the pile of feathers... in shock... I mean, I didn't know it was loaded. I mean, I might have. But I guess I didn't really think about what was going to happen. All I could think was... that I killed that bird. That something so gentle, that was just flying around minutes ago... and I turned it into nothing but a pile of blood and feathers. I did that. I took it off this earth forever.

Ever since then, I've wanted the ability to turn back time. Just... for the chance to make up for our sins. I know it's not logical, or rational but... that's just what I've always wanted.

Yea, I've never answered a question like that.

But think about it. In entertainment world, this type of answer occurs all the time. And for some reason, in Caprica, I noticed it very distinctly. And if you can't tell, it kind of annoyed me.

Man, that was a lot of writing to make a simple point. IRONY!

Let's nerd it up

(I think I had this exact poster. In scroll form...)

When I was in high school, I watched a fair bit of anime. I even went to the comic convention once and bought wall-scrolls, which I then adorned the walls of my bedroom with.

I never said it was a proud time.

Kitschy decor aside, I have recently kind of rediscovered a bunch of the old anime that I used to enjoy, and been pleasantly surprised to find that some of them are not only still relevant and entertaining, but are in the process of being completely redone and remastered. It's good to know that classics never really die.

Now, I realize I am not an anime connoisseur. To be honest, I haven't even seen that much, but of what I have enjoyed in my brief experiences, here are my top five favourite anime:

5) Macross

Space fighting, lasers, robots that transformed into airplanes. What more could you ask for? A classic.

4) Voices of a Distant Star

Admittedly, this 25-minute movie is kind of emo. It's about high-school kids in love, separated by time and space due to an intergalactic alien battle. The animation is even kind of simple. But take into account it was made entirely by one dude, on a G4 Mac computer, and everything becomes much more impressive. The story is also told in a very unique way, making use of text messaging to convey time, and a great theme song makes this a particularly unique, emotional and entertaining piece of work.

3) Dragonball Z

Another classic. Yea, it eventually ran kind of long, and there are episodes where nothing happened except angry staring contests. But those lulls where easy to overlook. When this was good, it was really, really good. It's an iconic franchise, even here in the western world. Debatably, it's the most popular serialized anime of all time. It was also blatantly racist, arguing that we'd all be more powerful if we could unlock our latent Aryan powers. Hmmm....

2) Princess Mononoke

Probably the most riveting cartoon movie I've ever seen. Well, it's up there, right up alongside the Lion King, at least. Also, it was environmentally friendly before being environmentally friendly was cool, yo.

1) Neon Genesis Evangelion

I just re-watched this series from beginning to end. I distinctly recall being a huge fan when I was younger, but being thoroughly and utterly confused by the existentialist ending at the time. Actually, I wasn't just confused. I was disappointed. I wanted giant robots fighting. And that was absolutely not what happens at the end.

I won't ruin it, but suffice to say that on my recent reacquaintance with the series, I had a much more nuanced and reflective experience. I was more aware of the philosophical queries and moral quagmires posed by the creators. I was challenged by the complex and patently dysfunctional characters as human beings, and not just pilots of giant fighting robots.

Basically, I really, really enjoyed watching this. Much moreso than even when I was younger, and I feel there was a deeper appreciation for it this go around.

The plot is confusing, convoluted and complex. There is no arguing this. But in terms of character development and arc, cinematography and artistic endeavor, Neon Genesis is right up there not just as anime, but one of the best pieces of television I have ever had the pleasure of watching. I'm glad I watched it again.

I know lots of people love Naruto, but I've never really gotten into that. Should I? It seems like Dragonball in that there's just too much ground to cover at this point. I also always wanted to watch Love Hina and Cowboy Bebop. Anyone watched those? Are they good?

Just as an aside, Neon Genesis is currently being redone as a movie quadrilogy, with each two-hour movie basically retelling 6 episodes of the original series. I just watched the first one (the only one out right now, the second releases this summer) and although some scenes are shot-for-shot reproductions, there is also a fair amount of tonal change that helps makes the plot much more accessible.

The drawing is redone really well, and apparently the final movie is going to completely redo the ending to appeal to a more mainstream audience. I'm excited.

ALSO, apparently DBZ is in the process of being remastered in HD as well. I wonder if I'd consider buying that. I have fond childhood memories of watching that show at my cousin's house every week, and renting each movie on laserdisc (!) as soon as it came out.

Pure nostalgia.