It’s been over a month since I last touched my current Cocoa project.
I need to start working on it again. Otherwise, by the time I finish it, it will have been obsoleted by software agents that look like Tom Baker.
And while I want Tom Baker in my computer as much as anyone, I’d like to write something cool on my own first.
I’d also probably keep calling him Doctor. And I bet that would annoy even a virtual Tom Baker.
I’m really excited because I’ve decided to finish reading Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim when I get home today. I’m at about the half-way point in the book, but I’ve gotten there by reading a page here or there. I haven’t really sat down and read a book since I finished reading Spin. That was also when I started reading Eifelheim.
It’s amazing how easy it is to get sucked into watching crappy television series (like Smallville) or great television series (like The West Wing) instead. To just collapse onto the couch, reach for a remote control, and have entertainment spoon-fed into my mind is…well, easy. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with easy entertainment. And certainly, shows like The West Wing or Buffy or Firefly play with big ideas that are worth thinking about. Indeed, those three transcend the bounds of trashy TV entertainment and enter the realm of art. (And then there’s Smallville, which is dumb while still being enjoyable; but I keep wondering what it would have been like if it had been done by Joss Whedon. Among other things, I imagine that Lana would be a much stronger character and not just wait around for Clark to save her all the time.)
But TV lacks something. And I don’t hold with the traditional reasons why books are “better” than television. It’s not about imagination or thinking-skills or superior dramatic presentation or anything like that.
Every episode of The West Wing challenges the viewer to think in some way. Its dramatic presentation is often flawless and simply couldn’t be done without the skills of the actors or directors or cinematographers. It just wouldn’t work in book-form and I’m happier as a person to have seen it (and to own the DVDs so I can watch it over and over again. I just finished season 3 again last night.).
As for imagination: don’t even try to tell me that a world where demons wage war against a small suburban California town and a vampire-with-a-soul is in love with the one woman in the world with both the power and mandate to kill him doesn’t require quite a bit of imagination to deal with. The threshold for the suspension of disbelief is so high that it simply requires one’s imagination to get a workout. Indeed, this is true for any good sci-fi or fantasy. It’s easy to demonstrate too. Just find the online communities of fans and watch how they invent new rules of the fictional universe just to keep individual episodes consistent with one another. And then, of course, there’s fanfic…
Too much TV doesn’t ask the viewer to think (*cough*DayTimeTV*cough*), but I don’t like it when people judge the entire medium based on the flaws of the poorly executed. So there’s that.
The something that TV lacks is the tactile nature of reading: The weight of the book in my hands, the feel of the pages on my finger tips, the smell of the paper, the sound of the turning pages, the elegance of well done typography. These things combine to create an experience that’s completely unreproducible in any other way. Everything else after that (owning the characters in my mind in a way that I’ll never own Buffy or Mal or President Bartlet, creating a world that’s unique to my imagination, etc.) is just gravy.
And that’s why I’m excited to be planning to go home tonight and leave the DVD player off. I’ll turn on my reading light, sit down in a reasonably comfortable char, and hold a good book in my hands. And despite all the turns my life has taken, it will be truly good to be me.
Does anyone else think that Al Gore III looks a bit like Frank?
It looks like Spamalot is playing at the Peace Center in Greenville in April of 2008.
I think people need to make plans to go see it with me, because otherwise, I’m going to a play in Greenville by myself.
(Avenue Q is playing in July of 2008 and I think people should make plans to go see that with me too; but I’m less adamant about it.)
covered in BEES
Originally uploaded by danguyf.
Neil Gaiman is COVERED IN BEES! (It’s an Eddie Izzard joke, a LOLCat joke, and a picture of Neil Gaiman all at the same time. This picture has broken the needle on my awesomeness meter.)
