Hot Stove TV
Earlier today on Twitter, critic Ryan McGee kicked off the hashtag game #HotStoveTV – applying the deal-making madness that grips professional sports in their off-seasons (such as Major League Baseball’s ongoing winter meetings) to the wide world of television. And you know what? It’s amazing how efficiently you could swap a few key players around and really bolster a show’s line-up.
Below the jump, a few I came up with:
How the biggest risk of my life paid off
On February 24 of this year, I left my job.
I wasn’t a casualty of the economy, and I wasn’t decamping for a better position (not immediately, at least). I left because I was worn out by a job I wasn’t suited for, in a line of work I didn’t want to pursue long-term. I left because months of trying to maneuver into a more satisfying role—either internally or externally—had come up empty, and because my existing role was a big reason behind that futility. I wasn’t learning the sort of skills I desired.
I was approaching my 30th birthday, with a resume that looked nothing like the person I wanted to be. And the longer I stuck around, the longer that ersatz resume got, the deeper that false impression sunk in. I needed to make a change. I needed to take a risk. Even if that meant giving up a steady, well-paying job and plunging into the lousiest labor market in years.
Sunday driver: What does AMC’s scheduling say about its branding?
I contributed a discussion to In Media Res, a project of MediaCommons curated by friend of the blog Noel Kirkpatrick. Check out my thoughts on how AMC’s determination to schedule their programs on Sunday nights represents a conscience branding decision on the part of the network – one that may not be working to its overall advantage.
Sunday driver: What does AMC’s scheduling say about its branding?
Guest-criticizing from around the web this week
Over in the realm of TV criticism, I’ve teamed up with friend of the blog Cory Barker of TV Surveillance for a couple of projects this week.
Check out our dueling takes on the pilot episode of HBO’s K Street, a short-lived 2003 docudrama from Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney.
Then give a listen as Cory, fellow friend of the blog Les Chappell of A Helpless Compiler, and I ruminate for 90 damn minutes about Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead on the TV Surveillance podcast.
Stratford-On-Hellmouth
One of the many reasons I adore Twitter is the way the hive mind can concoct some amazing things. A good idea can become a great idea can become something truly gazoinksbo, in the best possible way.
In that spirit, I give you a sampling of how I spent much of Monday evening with a group of Twitter comrades. In the wake of the news that some of the Joss Whedon Players have made a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, we naturally took it upon ourselves to cast some of the Bard’s other works with our favorite denizens of the Whedonverse. And Christine Becker, who curates the wonderful @GoodTVeets, was there to chronicle the wackiness.
Check it out, shan’t you? And then be sure to follow all these participants on Twitter, so as not to miss out on the next bout of inspiration that strikes we few, we happy few, we band of Scoobies.
UPDATE 11/3/2011: This carefully curated bit of tomfoolery is now available in Tumblr form, with all the original participants playing along.
In which I make my podcast debut
Do you enjoy reading about TV, except for the part where you have to read? Then why not try a podcast instead! In the inaugural episode of the ChicagoNow TV Tandem, Julie Hammerle of Hammervision and I gab about the season finale of Breaking Bad, the return of The Walking Dead, our favorite new shows of the fall, and just why Julie and the rest of femalekind insist on oppressing hard-working white men like me and Tim Allen.
A version should also be available through iTunes shortly. Check it out, and feel free to send questions, suggestions, or cookie recipies to chicagonowtvtandem@gmail.com. We’ll hope to make these podcasts a regular feature, so listener feedback will go a long way. You may even receive a cut of our profits!*
*Editor’s note: Our profits are zero.
Listen to the
ChicagoNow TV Tandem podcast, Episode 1
The Vast Wasteland on the radio tubes!
The Craftsman World of DIY Presents The Down and Dirty 09/25 by Down and Dirty | Blog Talk Radio
AOL’s Patch, HBR, and sustainable local journalism
Last week, Maxwell Wessel posted an entry on the Harvard Business Review’s blog network critiquing AOL’s strategy for Patch, an experiment in local news aggregation that is currently a rather high-profile drain on the company’s coffers. I appreciate the thesis of the post: that rather than ignore or discard Patch, AOL should invest in it more intelligently.
What bugs me is that Wessel mentions the ostensible purpose of Patch—the gathering and reporting of news—exactly twice, both times subtly disparaging it. First, in characterizing Patch’s modus operandi:
“Patch’s current business model is unsustainable. Patch is building a network of journalists and salespeople, and it’s costing the company a lot. This is not the way to build a disruptive business and it’s an open question as to whether Patch must grow this way to win in local news. Patch doesn’t need to be spending money this way to win in the space.”
Something something "write stuff" pun
As a writer, one of my strongest and most well-practiced skills is talking myself out of writing. This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the lamentably sparse updates of either of my blogs lately (hey, I had one good week in July there!) Oh sure, every now and then some diaphanous wisp of an idea floats into my head and I manage to mold it into 900 words of reasonably entertaining prose. But for every one that somehow sees the light of day, three or four others vanish ignominiously into the ether, having inspired little more than a few illegible scribblings or incoherent out-loud sputterings.
It’s a discouraging state of affairs, and one I’m inspired to improve after attending a class/discussion group on blogging last night with genuinely accomplished blogger & writer Kate Harding, at Story Studio Chicago (a terrific resource for you fellow Windy City wordsmiths). In that light, I’ve decided that step one is identifying the most common—well, excuses is such an ugly word; let’s call them “perfectly sound and logical counterarguments”—which lead me to abandon a potential piece of writing:
- Somebody must have already made this exact point. Probably better. And if not, they will.
- The DVR’s at, like, 64%.
- What sentient, literate being would ever even want to read this misshapen jumble of quarter-baked doofusery??
- Hey, 18 new tweets!
- Yup. This is it. This one would wake them all up to the reality that I am a hack and a charlatan. It must be buried and forgotten. The illusion of my competence must live another day!
- Welp, this Dragon Age quest ain’t gonna play itself.
Other creative types, please feel free to chip in with your own favorite self-defeating tactic.
Andrea Pallas Daglas 
Why you’d rather be killed by a Mayan prophecy than a French psychopath
In the latest installment of The New Cult Canon (a feature you should be reading regularly at The A.V. Club), Scott Tobias examines the grisly French horror film Inside, and questions how viewers gauge what is “too far” when it comes to representations of violence and death in movies. He notes how often people are repelled by the visceral depiction of individual deaths in horror films, but shrug off the far greater lethality implicit in end-of-the-world blockbusters from the Michael Bay or Roald Emmerich mold. Writes Scott:
Which is completely logical, when you stop and think about it for half a minute. The combined body count of the Saw franchise is but a minute fraction of the death toll claimed in just one sequence of Independence Day, a lighthearted popcorn flick better remembered for Bill Pullman’s bad-ass quasi-Patton moment than for gleefully positing the obliteration of dozens of major cities—and, along with them, tens of millions of human lives. It brings to mind the infamous quip attributed to Josef Stalin: “One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.”
Read more…