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| Sunday, January 17th, 2010 | | 5:24 pm |
The Tonight Show
I have been enjoying this NBC/”Tonight Show”/Jay&Conan nonsense as much as anyone over the past week—mostly due to the sincere snarkery of TV critics like Alan Sepinwall, Mo Ryan, and Tim Goodman, as they tweeted the best lines and gossip as overheard at the Television Critics Association meeting—but I admit to being flabbergasted that late night is still this big a deal. Seriously, paying Conan O’Brien forty million dollars to go away, when few people were even aware he was there?
Of course, this is the same network that’s pissing two hundred million dollars down the Olympic hole, so what do they know?
(When it’s quite clear that I could run a television network better than these bozos can…it’s safe to say, “You’re doing it wrong.”)
It’s hard to remember (or to believe), but here’s why “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson was such a big deal: That’s the show where you got to see the stars. If you wanted to see a star chatting and “letting loose” with a host who made them feel at home and let them talk a bit, you watched “The Tonight Show.”
We didn’t have TV and internet 24/7 filling endless hours with minutiae of the stars’ lives, with the reality shows letting us in on every little goddamn minute of these people’s days. Yes, there were supermarket tabloids, but news channels barely existed in 1992, when Carson quit. Now when anything having to do with a celebrity happens, we get endless blathering coverage, filling air time, hoping against hope that they will get the money shot of someone overdosing or whatever. And if you want to watch something at 11:30pm, how many choices do you have now? Answer: lots.
Johnny Carson was an amazing host, and here’s what he did that I’ve seen rarely since: he listened. Letterman never listens to the guest; he’s on to the next scripted question while the star is still babbling their scripted answer to the last one. I don’t know if Craig Ferguson listens, although he seems like he might. Jay Leno certainly never listens (to anyone, if these stories burbling out are correct).
We have endless talk and columns and blog entries (hey there) about this segment of TV history that has, frankly, passed. Except for the part about them having even more hours that they need to fill, and they can’t fill them all with obvious infomercials.
All I’m wondering is, if they can afford forty million dollars to make Conan go away, how much money is every hour of broadcast TV worth? And could they start coughing up some more public-interest programming as part of the price?
Originally published at Nobody Knows Anything. You can comment here or there. | | Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Monday, January 11th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Sunday, January 10th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Saturday, January 9th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | 2:52 pm |
Stop the drama
There’s a forum I hang out on—yes, Otto, the-forum-that-shall-not-be-named—and there’s one section that’s basically about people asking for life advice. Many of those asking questions are younger, usually in their early twenties. I find myself giving a lot of advice, from the perspective of my advanced years. I can boil most of my advice down to one phrase. It’s applicable to almost every situation, and it’s applicable to thee and to me.
And that advice is: STOP THE DRAMA.
Stop the histrionics. Stop seeking approval or acceptance or admiration by dialing all of your emotions and experiences up to 11. Start looking at your life as though you have a modicum of control over it, because you DO. You CAN choose how you respond to things, both emotionally and physically. You are the one who will decide what you do right now.
Having drama in your life is having heightened emotions. It’s about how something sounds rather than the truth of what is.
A lot of us, particularly when we’re younger, are addicted to the dramatics of a situation. We confuse feeling emotion about a situation—“He done me wrong!” “She talked about me behind my back!” “She stole my shoes!”—for the relative importance of the situation. We run to our friends and want their commiseration or even their admiration for how totally crazy our lives are.
We all have the friends who have crazy crap happen to them left and right, and we think, “How come their lives are so much more dramatic than mine is?” Because they’re CHOOSING to be that way. It makes them feel alive, like they’re the star of their own story. When in reality…they’re allowing themselves to be buffeted by external events. Past the age of 25, it’s not cute any more. Get a grip on reality, accept that you’re in charge, and act accordingly.
When I was in college, I got involved with this guy I’ve charitably described as a “sociopath.” Using words like that is being dramatic about it. At the time I got a lot of mileage out of feeling used and abused, out of the drama of how he was going to treat me this week, out of the choices of how I was going to live my life because of this one guy. I made him the bad guy and me the victim.
Whereas if I were going to cut the drama and really engage in what what happening, I would allow myself to feel sad that I had spent so much time with this guy, I would feel compassion for myself that I allowed him to make me feel like dirt, and I would say, “You know, I don’t need this kind of person in my life.” No late-night crying with friends, no histrionics. Move on. I would take control and realize that it really is better to be alone than in bad company, and then I would see that I had opened up space in my life to have better company.
Take this test: Pick a situation you feel highly emotional about right now and you want to call all of your friends about. Here’s what I want you to tell your friend: “Okay, I’m going to tell you about something that happened. Here’s what I want you to do: nothing. Don’t respond in any way. Don’t agree with me, don’t comment on what this other person did, just listen to me.”
If your reaction to that scenario is, “Why would I tell someone about this if they weren’t going to side with me and tell me that I’m the victim here?” then you’re still caught up in the drama.
Here’s another test: do you use exaggerated comparatives to describe your situation? That is, is it the “worst” thing he’s done, the “scariest” thing that’s ever happened, the “best” relationship you can imagine having, so you have to hold on to it, at all costs?
(A friend–who lived a fairly dramatic life himself–once coined, “It was the WORST thing that’s EVER happened to ANYONE in the history of Western Civilization!” He was kidding. I think.)
If you’re using these kinds of terms to describe the situation, you’re being dramatic. You’re more involved with having a good story than you are with what’s actually going on.
STOP. Take a few minutes to sit quietly. Relate the facts of the situation: not “My boyfriend humiliated me in front of every single important person in my life!” but “Bob said some really mean things about me in front of lots of my friends.” Then ask yourself how you truly feel about this situation, here and now, not acting out in front of anyone. Now ask, What are you going to do about it?
There is nothing wrong with feeling emotion about a situation. If your friends from college turn out to be bad, unstable roommates (as happened to me), feel sad because your friendship wasn’t what it was…and then make plans to move elsewhere. No need for drama. Take control.
And looking back at it… I’m sure I was no prize as a roommate either.
The more you harness your own energy and spend it on the important stuff in your life rather than making every little upset its own vortex, the easier it gets, and the more powerful you get. If someone tries to drag you into their drama, you say, “This is not for me,” and you leave them to it.
It can be scary though. If you give up having drama in your life and choose to face your emotions and your reactions head on, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to be the one in charge. You have no one to blame, because if a friend goes nutso on you, you can’t run around and say, “Gaaaaah! What do I do?” You can’t have screaming arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong. You get to decide how you’re going to handle it, without making a good story out of it.
You’re also going to lose friends. Friends who put up with your dramatics so they can touch the electric wire of crazy emotions. Friends who are used to dumping their drama on you. Once you start responding to their stories with, “Wow, you seem really upset about that. What are you going to do about it?” you’ve just punctured their drama. You’re not their audience any more. They’re going to go elsewhere.
Trust me. Finding other adults who can deal with their own emotions and lives like, well, adults, is a real treat.
Originally published at Nobody Knows Anything. You can comment here or there. | | Friday, January 8th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Thursday, January 7th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | 6:06 pm |
Recent movie round-up
Darin and I are still trying to see every movie that comes down the pike and even during Oscar-bait season we sometimes still have a hard time finding one. And forthwith, a short review of what we’ve seen at the multiplex recently:
- Avatar: Blue indigenous people good, technological whitey bad. (Unless techie whitey is pretending to be one of the indigenous people, in which case he’s the best fucking indigenous person ever.) Go read this. Then this. And this. That’s how I feel about Avatar.
Walking out of the theater I said: “We’ll nuke it from space. It’s the only way to be sure.” Because technological whitey wants “unobtanium” a LOT. Also: I saw floating mountains in World of Warcraft three years ago.
Rated: Underwhelmed.</p>
- Sherlock Holmes: Ah, Robert Downey Jr. Seriously, he is currently the holder of the “Errol Flynn Memorial I-Can’t-Believe-I-Get-Paid-For-This” crown. I’m not sure what he’s doing is actually acting, but who cares? He’s having an awesome time. Some stuff happened in this movie, none of which I need to tell you about, other than Holmes and Watson exchanging banter. Not sure anything that happened was particularly Holmesian, but everyone appeared to enjoy themselves. I’m sure there will be a sequel and that you will not need to remember any of the plot points from this one.
Rated: Fun!
- Invictus: Walking into the theater you know how this one is going to end, and it doesn’t matter: director Clint Eastwood is going to make you feel stirring emotions, dammit. Which he does, often and with no small doses. The combination of real-life drama, crowd scenes, and stirred emotions is enough to kill you during the before the opening credits sequence, so you can imagine how you feel by the climax. For me this was a must-see, because in my book Matt Damon can do no wrong, and once again he’s solid here. Darin said that Morgan Freeman’s Mandela was the best non-imitation interpretation of a real-life figure since Langella’s Nixon, and I think that’s about right. Bring hankies.
My question: Why has a sport as violent and in-you-face as rugby not made it here in America? N.B.: You do not need to understand or like rugby to enjoy this film.
Rated: Exciting! Inspiring! Exhausting!
- The Princess and the Frog: Now, this is what I’m talking about for family entertainment. Great songs! Feisty heroine! Joy! Sadness! Musical numbers! We loved this movie, although there’s a sad bit toward the end that really bothered the 7-year-old.
Rated: Whoo!
- Up in the Air: What you have to know is that I love George Clooney. I have no idea what the actual man is like, nor do I want to know. He is the current reigning holder of the “Cary Grant Memorial Of-Course-You-Want-To-Be-Me,-Even-I-Want-To-Be-Me” crown. And while I enjoyed him muchly in this film (as always), I think the film as a whole is deeply overrated. For one thing, it looked like TV—there was nothing that screamed “Major Motion Picture” about the story, the cinematography, or frankly the acting. For another thing, the story was nothing special. This movie has gotten so much love and so many accolades I’m wondering if we saw the wrong cut or something.
Rated: Unexceptional
- Fantastic Mr. Fox: Again: the Clooney Meister wins. This is a really fun animated movie about anthropomorphic animals and their hijinks. It’s been a few weeks since we saw it, so I can’t remember anything in particular about the script or the story I liked, but I know that just thinking about it makes me smile, so there you go.
Rated: Foxy!
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel: Yeah, we haven’t had a chance to catch this one.
Not yet rated
Originally published at Nobody Knows Anything. You can comment here or there. | | Monday, January 4th, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | 5:43 pm |
The lessons of 1000 miles
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531 BC)
I Googled this quotation to make sure I had it right, and I discovered a translation even more interesting underneath the popular understanding.
Although this is the popular form of this quotation, a more correct translation from the original Chinese would be “The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” Rather than emphasizing the first step, Lau Tzu regarded action as something that arises naturally from stillness. Another potential phrasing would be “Even the longest journey must begin where you stand.” [note by Michael Moncur, September 01, 2004]
In other words: Begin where you are. Get the feet moving.
I did, in fact, make my goal of running 1000 miles in 2009. In fact, I made it to 1001.5, as the running watch flies. It was not easy, because while I was way ahead of the game by the end of June (when I ran the marathon), I slacked off immediately thereafter. By October, I realized I was well behind where I needed to be to get to 1000. I really had to start ramping up the mileage in November, which wasn’t easy, given that we were spending a week in Michigan, and I had to do 120 miles in December. The most I’d run all year was 130, and that was when I was training for a marathon.
(As it turned out, I could have run in Michigan: while it was colder than it was here, it wasn’t that much colder than the coldest days I’ve run in this area. No snow, only a little rain. Lesson #1: bring your damn running stuff with you.)
I ran the 120 miles in December, even though I had to give up weight training to do it. I’ve definitely found that once I get to about 90 miles for the month, doing any other sort of exercise along with the running becomes impossible. I keep expecting my body is going to adjust upwards, but no: over 90, and running is all you get.
The question becomes, of course: Why on Earth did I pursue this goal?
And the answer is: To see if I could do it.
When I signed up for the challenge (at 3fatchicks.com, best site on the Web for weight loss support!), I thought, This is insane. Then I thought: I wonder how far I’ll get. The idea attracted me strongly, so I put “Run 1000 miles” on my list of goals for the year, and every time I went running I added the total to a spreadsheet I’d made to keep track. Once I made it a goal, I think my mind started figuring out how I could do it.
I’ve found that making a list of 10 goals for the year is really valuable, if I really sit down and think about what I want to accomplish. Not what I think I should do, but what I want to do. The process outlined in Your Best Year Ever! by Jinny Ditzler has helped me a lot to make goal lists for the year. Making lists of goals I should do is a complete waste of time, and I’ve never made a New Year’s Resolution in my life. But seriously considering things I would like to accomplish during a year, writing it down, and posting it somewhere where I can see: that has been a powerful and useful practice, one I highly recommend.
(Another recommendation for a yearly practice I highly encourage: finding your Word of the Year, which I got from Christine Kane. It really sets your mood for the whole year, particularly if you keep reminding yourself of it at various times. It’s a shorthand way of reminding yourself what kind of experience you want to have, without beating yourself over the head about doing this, that, or the other.)
Doing 1000 miles reminded me that I can take a crazy, outsized goal and actually achieve it. That when I think of something I want to do and immediately react with, “Oh no, I could never do that,” I can remind myself, “You did one thousand miles, babe. You can do this.”
One really important part of making 1000 miles was that I told myself I could do it, over and over again, reminding myself of the goal, seeing myself finishing. It was a goal far outside my comfort zone—I run somewhere between 9 and 11 minutes a mile, depending on terrain and my exhaustion level, so 1000 miles is a hell of time investment, not to mention the physical costs. And yet it was really exhilarating (even while it was exhausting) to keep racking up the miles.
(By the way, if at any time my body had hurt (beyond the simple aches of making it move), I would have stopped. These people who run through crippling pain? I am not that person.)
I’m not sure I would even think about doing it again, except my running bud Nina wants to run 1000 miles this year, and I am duty-bound to get her there! I don’t know if it can really count as a yearly goal this time around though.
§
I’ve started working on a couple of side projects—one of them that I’m willing to share with the world right now is Let The Freak Flag Fly, a blog dedicated to people being who they gotta be. I find stories about people who find out who they really are and live large as a result to be very inspiring, mostly as I am trying to find my own identity for this period in my life.
If you have any suggestions for topics or want to suggest URLs or even want to write an entry about how you let the freak flag fly, please drop me a line at diane -at- let-the-freak-flag-fly-.-com (please to remove all dashes and spaces and replace the at with an at-sign…you know the drill).
Originally published at Nobody Knows Anything. You can comment here or there. | | Friday, January 1st, 2010 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | | 11:30 pm |
| | 4:40 pm |
| | Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 | | 11:30 pm |
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