I don't know if you're aware or not, but I really hate CBS. I think that, as far as basic networks go, it is by far the dumbest, most poorly run station and I haven't actually had the desire to watch any of its programming in many years. That doesn't mean that I haven't watched them, though. And that also doesn't mean that I have always despised it. I will freely admit that I was a hardcore "Amazing Race" fan for its first season, if only for the deliciously sexy and first-prize-winning team of Rob & Brennan. I stuck with "Survivor" until it become disgustingly fake in the tenth season. I would also occasionally turn on "Big Brother" or "Everybody Loves Raymond." Now, it's a miracle if I can make it through half an episode of anything on the entire network. Last night, I almost killed myself during a viewing of "Two and a Half Men" and "Rules of Engagement." The jokes were not funny, the actors were practically mugging their way through their script, and I didn't give a shit about anything that was happening. Actually I did care. I cared that characters so ridiculously stupid and two-dimensional were actually given life. As much as I love Neil Patrick Harris (and I love him a lot) I haven't been able to sit through an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" in over a year. It's just not funny! It's not creative, it's not imaginative, it's not original. Every sitcom on CBS is basically a 22 minute headache and the reality programs which, at one time, were the inventive pioneers of the genre, have now become exhausted reminders of what once was. I cannot speak for the channel's dramatic programming as I have never wanted to take the risk and sit through it, but I can't imagine anything being able to impress me.
The thing that pushed me over the edge with my disgust for CBS, though, was the Evening News with Katie Couric tonight. In order to boost slipping ratings, Ms. Couric has been shipped to Iraq to report from the war front. Tonight's episode featured Ms. Couric walking down what appeared to be a quiet street in Iraq flanked by many soldiers and wearing the thickest Kevlar vest I have ever seen. Oh, and, get this: sunglasses. My point is this: if they're going to make poor Ms. Couric go to Iraq to get more people to watch her subpar news stories, maybe they should try to make her look a little less like a city girl uncomfortably thrown into a war zone and a little more like a journalist. Maybe a little less footage of her sipping smoothie-like drinks made in a blender and a little more of her actually doing something.
They also showed a clip of American bodies, burned, and being dragged behind a car. But instead of actually showing the footage, the bodies themselves were blurred out to, I assume, protect the squeamish American public from seeing the truth. This shielding of the truth is akin to a mother covering her child's eyes when something comes along that may be a little too much for the young one. The right-wing reiteration that the violence is decreasing is clearly untrue and no one wants to tell us. No one wants the public to know the truth and that isn't right. This is our country and we should all be informed and aware.
If the fiction is bad and the nonfiction may be worse, what is the point of even turning the dial in the direction of CBS? Frankly, I can't see one.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Prologue.
I don't consider myself a writer.
I used to, but as I grew older, read more, and looked back on the things I composed during my so-called "writer" stage, I realized that I was really not good enough to warrant the official title. Writing, to me, has always been too personal a task to claim that anything I put down is purely fiction. I'm aware that there's a piece of the author in everything he writes, but, for me, writing was a sort of therapy; a way to deal with the things I was going through with out actually having to worry about them. My early plays are filled with young men coming to terms with problems in their lives: sexuality, parental pressure, etc., basically everything that I consciously or sub-consciously knew was going on with me.
I also think that that is why I stopped writing. Plays, at least. I realized what I was doing, realized they were complete and utter shit, and gave up. When I would read the beauty that is Angels in America or the effortlessness of a LaBute piece, I'd just feel inferior and incompetent and terrible because here I was - defaming their noble profession with my whiny, pointless shit. I blamed it on my house, on having writer's block, on being too busy and not having time for ideas - and all of those reasons were, perhaps, truly absorbed by my psyche, but they weren't real.
You see, I was blessed with the ability to think I know what's going on in my head at all times. Even if I actually have absolutely no idea. The logical side of my brain (which is utilized quite infrequently outside of this function) forms a complicated rationalization regarding everything I do if I am unsure whether or not I made the right decision to get me there. I think I've managed to channel the insane amount of worrying I did as a child into an insane amount of justification for my actions as a semi-adult. Instead of freaking out about saying the wrong thing, which was a commonplace activity for Young Lane, I justify my slip in terms of progression and in terms of fate. I was "meant" to say that or do that. I don't necessarily believe it, but, somehow, it comforts me and stops the impending worry.
But back to writing.
I've tried to pick up the pen again, but I end up turning it into an essay of sorts - a biographical sketch or the like and it eventually ends up in my MySpace blog. Or I write a poem and it ends up saved on my computer under lock and password for no one to see (or judge). Because no matter how many writing awards I win or how many people tell me that I can, indeed, write, I don't believe it and I don't want people to think that I write to show off or to regale my readers with my talent. That is not it at all. I write blogs and things because they help me process. That's it. That's all. I don't try to sound pretentious in my writing. I don't purposely look for big, different, interesting words. Thesauri give me headaches. I write what I think and, most of the time, it comes out on paper (or screen) exactly as it is in my head. Everything I write is a manifestation of my personal thoughts. That's all there is to it.
Which is why I do not consider myself a writer.
I used to, but as I grew older, read more, and looked back on the things I composed during my so-called "writer" stage, I realized that I was really not good enough to warrant the official title. Writing, to me, has always been too personal a task to claim that anything I put down is purely fiction. I'm aware that there's a piece of the author in everything he writes, but, for me, writing was a sort of therapy; a way to deal with the things I was going through with out actually having to worry about them. My early plays are filled with young men coming to terms with problems in their lives: sexuality, parental pressure, etc., basically everything that I consciously or sub-consciously knew was going on with me.
I also think that that is why I stopped writing. Plays, at least. I realized what I was doing, realized they were complete and utter shit, and gave up. When I would read the beauty that is Angels in America or the effortlessness of a LaBute piece, I'd just feel inferior and incompetent and terrible because here I was - defaming their noble profession with my whiny, pointless shit. I blamed it on my house, on having writer's block, on being too busy and not having time for ideas - and all of those reasons were, perhaps, truly absorbed by my psyche, but they weren't real.
You see, I was blessed with the ability to think I know what's going on in my head at all times. Even if I actually have absolutely no idea. The logical side of my brain (which is utilized quite infrequently outside of this function) forms a complicated rationalization regarding everything I do if I am unsure whether or not I made the right decision to get me there. I think I've managed to channel the insane amount of worrying I did as a child into an insane amount of justification for my actions as a semi-adult. Instead of freaking out about saying the wrong thing, which was a commonplace activity for Young Lane, I justify my slip in terms of progression and in terms of fate. I was "meant" to say that or do that. I don't necessarily believe it, but, somehow, it comforts me and stops the impending worry.
But back to writing.
I've tried to pick up the pen again, but I end up turning it into an essay of sorts - a biographical sketch or the like and it eventually ends up in my MySpace blog. Or I write a poem and it ends up saved on my computer under lock and password for no one to see (or judge). Because no matter how many writing awards I win or how many people tell me that I can, indeed, write, I don't believe it and I don't want people to think that I write to show off or to regale my readers with my talent. That is not it at all. I write blogs and things because they help me process. That's it. That's all. I don't try to sound pretentious in my writing. I don't purposely look for big, different, interesting words. Thesauri give me headaches. I write what I think and, most of the time, it comes out on paper (or screen) exactly as it is in my head. Everything I write is a manifestation of my personal thoughts. That's all there is to it.
Which is why I do not consider myself a writer.
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