c r a z i e r t h a n y o u t h i n k
I am constantly being teased by Mandy and my family about being a hoarder, and to some degree I'll admit it. When I was a little kid, I wanted to be an "inventor". I kept everything I ever broke with the thought that I would transform it into something else, maybe even better than before.
I could go into a good bit of analysis and discussion about what social problems and which specifics of the human condition interact to make a person a hoarder and also why the rest of us need to separate them and classify them as such. Just like every American generation I've ever been exposed to directly, I believe I am a product of the Golden Age of Everything. Manufacturing and entertainment are the big ones for me, but I'm getting older so I'm beginning to slipslide into that perspective that everything from "my days" is better than today. Although that's just tangential and subjective, I have some completely objective points to make also.
I am PROFOUNDLY saddened by waste. I am PROFOUNDLY saddened by things MADE to be WASTED. The entropy cost of manufacturing plastic nothings with materials sourced from literally everywhere, shipped back to literally everywhere from China arranged into some icicle lights or Mighty Beanz which are entirely intended to be lost, broken, and sooner rather than later, landfilled, is astounding to me. The only lasting thing being made through this process is the arithmetic cost of entropy (chaos: S = k ln(w) ).
I once wrote an old blog about the Mr. Turtle swimming pool I had when I was very young and didn't throw away for years. The thing made me so very sad and it was always so hard to explain. The face on the turtle was so friendly and attractive it even had some affect on me as a college student, much less as a little kid. It made me want to be friends with the turtle. Of course, the turtle could not be my friend, and to make matters worse, the pool was not even well made enough to swim in once - it leaked right out of the box. The best way I have to explain it is this: The reality gap between the promise of turtle friendship and the real, cheap plastic thing in the box IS the giant hole we try to fill with our garages, basements, closets, corners, nooks and crannies full of junk.
When I watch the television show Hoarders, I feel so much for the poor people involved and I identify with the worst of them. I can easily stretch my mind to understand why the moldy, ratty cardboard boxes with undetermined content could mean so much to them. It's not that much more of a stretch for me to understand why they'd want to keep an old empty cardboard tube that once held a favorite Christmas wrap or the instructions to an appliance they no longer have. In many ways its representative to the hoarder, but we as a society, with our incessant advertising, marketing and drive to force more and more, of the less and less valuable or sustainable junk into people's closets and more importantly into our minds, must have some liability there.
The basic needs of human existence naturally formed the first economies. As economies themselves became one of the "new basics" of human existence, we began to blur the lines between need and want and the state of that dynamic centuries later in the Western world is what I would call profoundly PERVERTED. Perverted in the sense of taking something natural and over focusing or overdeveloping aspects of it to the point it's unrecognizable and deleterious to society (much like other kinds of perversion).
The people on Hoarders are essentially just normal people who for whatever reason are better tuned to be drawn in by the perversion that we've been whipping into a frenzy for centuries. They aren't given the respect they deserve, ever. Typical of our society, we love to gawk at the perverts and make fun of them. Might as well be the sex offender show or the mug shot parade on TMZ.
I have lots of junk. Some of it would be considered valuable by a large segment of the population because it has market value (old musical instruments and things like that) but you could sort it into piles of things with significance to fewer and fewer people 'till you got to the huge pile of things essentially valuable only to me. In my mind, all of it is still waiting (with the moldy basement full of broken toys of my childhood memories) to be magically transformed into "inventions" mother necessity hasn't inspired as of yet.
I have my own personal reality gap, also.(ya think?) To make myself feel better in the face of all this disdain, I can call myself a "project guy" a "Maker" or a "DIY type". The hard part is in getting others to call me those things. To legitimately earn any of those titles, I would honestly have to "D" a lot more of "I".
Here's my yardstick for the whole game. The so called experts always use the same line on the hoarders. "But are you using this RIGHT NOW?"
It is a loaded question and it's not fair debate. There's an obvious implication there that nobody should have anything they aren't using "right now", so with recent studies indicating that there really is no such thing as multitasking, just shorter intervals to rotate between linear tasks, nobody should have more than one thing to their names?
My question back would be "No, not right this second. How 'bout your savings account? You using that RIGHT NOW? Your retirement plan? Just askin'."
As a matter of fact, I think fear of the future (the same mental engine that drives things like retirement savings) is a contributor for me also. I have never had all that much faith that the stores, banks and factories will be here as long as I might. Given some form of that as a potential eventuality, where might a guy get something like a 1950's analog technology K&E transit, a slide rule, or even a good selection of silicon diodes or enough consistently manufactured copper wire to customize an electric transformer or motor, wind custom inductor coils or make simple resistors? Correct. Right out of my dusty, moldy savings account.
Unsoft's List
Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 3:42 PM
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 3:43 PM
s u s t a i n a b i l i t y the nested box
I've been thinking about my grandparents a lot lately. Not just who they were, but the way they did things. We've allowed ourselves to lose track of some really valuable perspective by rushing to adopt new paradigms without really considering that there may be a critical point of diminishing returns over which we are crossing. We rarely look back. The Point of Diminishing Returns, along with the Lowest Common Denominator are recurring themes with me.
Our grandparents did things with a certain dedication to maximums and minimums. The most economical way, even if it took more time. The shortest distance, even if the road was a little rougher. The way that made the most sense in the pocketbook or in the communities they called home. Those ways, distilled into a sound bite and redirected to the context of the 21st century could be as good a working definition of sustainability as any I've heard proposed from ivory towers, mindless machines or executive entities.
Natural social and economic sustainability was an evolved process with America’s greatest generation, finely honed during depression and war and established as a way of life, rural and urban. Innovative thinking that resolved itself into reality and eventually the status quo.
Innovation eventually ate itself as the pendulous mechanics of what we now call thinking "outside the box" swung farther and farther toward the abstract. The fundamental ethic of locality began to erode as the manufacturing age matured and sourcing evolved from a commonsense practice to a science and finally to a 900 pound gorilla that must be appeased.
The act of acquiring raw material to produce something of value has transformed into a geopolitical machine composed of the most senseless components, usually involving political philosophy, favored nations, and ridiculous shipping distances with the most important portion of the formula (labor) experiencing a rapid spiral of declining value not incomparable with the devaluation of monetary currency during hyperinflation.
Enough big buzzy words. To get right to it, we need to get back to the simple maximums and minimums that guided the everyday lives of our grandparents. There is a natural hierarchy of thinking strategy when it comes to innovation, and we have demonstrated that the benefits of thinking outside the box are mitigated by failing to bind it at or near the point of maximum balanced benefit. To simplify, we have to think our way to outside the box, beginning with inside the smallest box and working our way outward through the series of nested boxes representing our homes, then our neighborhoods, then our communities, our states, our regions, our national boundaries, our continent, and then on to the globe.
The key to balance and success is to know where to stop. Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 3:24 PM
 |
| Xander and the ghost of my Grandpa - Oct 2004. 2 minutes old. |
f a m i l y t r e e
f a m i l y t r e e
My Dad grew up with a really old dad. By the time I came around, I only knew him as an old guy who wandered around randomly cooking stuff and not really saying anything all that coherent. Funny how you see the future all your life. As a matter of fact, the minute Xander was born, that was the first thought I had. He looked exactly like my Grandpa as I remember him - wrinkled forehead and frizzy wisps of hair and that toothless smile that somehow seemed to hint at grumpiness just beneath the surface. I haven't seen the ghost of Grandpa in Xander since then, but I just recently saw a pic of the old guy when he was about 40 and his resemblance to me was uncanny. Skinny, frizzy headed wop with the same frown lines and wrinkled little eyes.
He was born outside Palermo, Sicily in 1894 so that picture (wish I had it to post now) was taken in 1934 - a good third of a century before I came along and a decade before my Dad was born. The occasion of the photograph was a celebration of his accomplishment. My Grandpa had just set some sort of record, I'm embarrassed to say I don't have any documentation of it, but the photo referenced a party in honor of Dominick Fish setting the record for the most coal loaded by hand in a single workday.
So when Grandpa was my age, it was the mid 1930's and he was an accomplished laborer in the coal mines of Fayette County - a job that any of us from around here know must've been pretty tough. Besides that, he and his wife raised a total of 12 children as they lived a life very close to the land. They grew, raised or hunted most of their own food, made their own bread in an outside stone oven, made pasta, brewed beer, made wine from the grapes they grew. This wasn't "DIY" or "project work" like it is for me. This was their real life.
In the ways I would hope to be like my stock, I somehow fall short. In the ways I would hope to be different, I struggle also. One thing is similar though. My son is in danger of growing up with an old Dad. Of course, there is only one of him as opposed to a dozen, and I still managed to shave a decade off the generation gap my Dad and Grandpa had to live with (and all too soon, without).
I have been the recipient of much benefit from the legacy of my Grandfather's hard labor and progenic success. Right now I feel the luckiest to be 43 years old and still have my own Father firmly stationed here in this world, cooking, drinking beer, loving my mom and answering his cell phone every single time I call.
Labels: family, fatherhood, legacy, success
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 3:28 PM
h e l l o w o r l d
I'm blowing the dust off my antique blog for compound and cumulative reasons. The most accurate and relevant of these is the acute manifestation of irreconcilable differences between my burgeoning Twitter addiction and my place of employment's newly reasserted policy against wasting public resources on social networking. They're cracking down on me, so I gotta change my evil ways.
Of course I spend a good deal of my social networking time interacting directly with the public whose resources I'm ostensibly wasting, performing several of the functions our underutilized CRM system is supposed to be taking care of - things like public education and outreach on departmental policies, customer response, timely construction related PSA's and just plain old setting the record straight about what's abuzz in the City.
Regardless, I strive to do good and ethical work during my time in the Public Service barrel so I will keep my Tweeting efforts segregated to my own time and resources while I try to assuage my need for connection with a mass audience by blogging and attempting to promote my efforts to the high quality local forum I've been lucky enough to cultivate after such a short time in the Twitterverse. In other words, I miss my Twitter folks so you guys stop by Unsoft's List every now and again when I put up something new! I'll be Tweeting in the evenings, on weekends and hopefully posting daytime blogs throughout the week also. After all, most of the best of MY Twitter community is also a blogging community. Maybe, with a little practice and dedication, I can also be a contributor.
The older posts here were all written by me 5-6 years ago and have lost much of their relevance in almost 2011. I am making no effort to "fix" them (editing old references, bad links, evaporated images, etc.). I have to admit when I go back and reread that I am certainly much the same even if another half a decade of travel into the 21st Century has rendered the world nearly unrecognizable in some respects. Go back and read the old posts if you are so inclined, but if you don't NBD. If you decide to crawl back into my history a little, be aware that I am a little more refined with my language these days. You certainly won't encounter adult content but you might run across a few more objectionable words than you will from this point forward. Not that I can promise you a comprehensive moratorium on F-Bombs, crass references or double entendre from here on out, because sometimes even I still resort to less than gentlemanly communication habits - I just get more disappointed in myself when I do.
I have to admit I'm a little excited about getting back to blogging a little. Twitter has reawakened my literary and creative demons but I'm really out of practice! This is so much more than 140 characters and I've nearly lost my ability to punctuate, compose formal sentences and I'm almost positive I missed a few double spaces after end punctuation that I still can't recognize after rerererereading.
I have done only the most basic profile editing on this old blog so I will be reshaping it over the next few days and weeks. I believe I will keep my old school handmade format and my neato seahorse image for now. I forgot how much I liked them.
Welcome new readers! I'm sure you are the only kind there are. Feel free to comment so I'll know you stopped by. See you later on Twitter!
TFish726
I'm blowing the dust off my antique blog for compound and cumulative reasons. The most accurate and relevant of these is the acute manifestation of irreconcilable differences between my burgeoning Twitter addiction and my place of employment's newly reasserted policy against wasting public resources on social networking. They're cracking down on me, so I gotta change my evil ways.
Of course I spend a good deal of my social networking time interacting directly with the public whose resources I'm ostensibly wasting, performing several of the functions our underutilized CRM system is supposed to be taking care of - things like public education and outreach on departmental policies, customer response, timely construction related PSA's and just plain old setting the record straight about what's abuzz in the City.
Regardless, I strive to do good and ethical work during my time in the Public Service barrel so I will keep my Tweeting efforts segregated to my own time and resources while I try to assuage my need for connection with a mass audience by blogging and attempting to promote my efforts to the high quality local forum I've been lucky enough to cultivate after such a short time in the Twitterverse. In other words, I miss my Twitter folks so you guys stop by Unsoft's List every now and again when I put up something new! I'll be Tweeting in the evenings, on weekends and hopefully posting daytime blogs throughout the week also. After all, most of the best of MY Twitter community is also a blogging community. Maybe, with a little practice and dedication, I can also be a contributor.
The older posts here were all written by me 5-6 years ago and have lost much of their relevance in almost 2011. I am making no effort to "fix" them (editing old references, bad links, evaporated images, etc.). I have to admit when I go back and reread that I am certainly much the same even if another half a decade of travel into the 21st Century has rendered the world nearly unrecognizable in some respects. Go back and read the old posts if you are so inclined, but if you don't NBD. If you decide to crawl back into my history a little, be aware that I am a little more refined with my language these days. You certainly won't encounter adult content but you might run across a few more objectionable words than you will from this point forward. Not that I can promise you a comprehensive moratorium on F-Bombs, crass references or double entendre from here on out, because sometimes even I still resort to less than gentlemanly communication habits - I just get more disappointed in myself when I do.
I have to admit I'm a little excited about getting back to blogging a little. Twitter has reawakened my literary and creative demons but I'm really out of practice! This is so much more than 140 characters and I've nearly lost my ability to punctuate, compose formal sentences and I'm almost positive I missed a few double spaces after end punctuation that I still can't recognize after rerererereading.
I have done only the most basic profile editing on this old blog so I will be reshaping it over the next few days and weeks. I believe I will keep my old school handmade format and my neato seahorse image for now. I forgot how much I liked them.
Welcome new readers! I'm sure you are the only kind there are. Feel free to comment so I'll know you stopped by. See you later on Twitter!
TFish726
Thursday, August 04, 2005 at 9:48 AM
p i n k o
From the perspective of the employee, job layoff is the paramount threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. From the modern executive class POV, it’s hardly anything more than tossing out the trash while laughing all the way to the bank.
I advocate adding balance to this inequity by any means necessary.
That’s right. You heard me.
Free market incentives to retain workforce? Sure. And if that doesn’t work, I’m sure Santa will bring us all new jobs.
I believe regulatory means are necessary. Big, nasty regulatory means. Mandated pay equity. Huge, unfriendly public audits of profit-taking activities. Established and enforced maximum executive/labor compensation ratios – and I’m not talking 500:1 here either. More like 5:1 max.
Other regulations I’d like to see developed:
Layoff tax. Corporate entities would owe a definable value to some government body representative of the residential tax base of the laid off employees. Some restitution to the State government whose tax base is crippled by unemployment with an assignable cause on a per employee basis. Additional restitution to incorporated municipalities, if the terminated employee resides in one. By basing the restitution values on number of dollars in compensation reduction, a cousin of this tax could be applied to any pay reduction activity, including salary cuts and reductions in work hours. This would serve to make that executive trip to the bank not quite as funny, while providing economic incentive to corporate entities to inject more responsibility into layoff activities.
Reimbursement of tax incentives. Any tax incentives a company receives for initiating business activities in a given area should be required to be accounted for and reimbursed to the government entity who granted it for any reduction in employment for the constituents of that government by that corporate entity. Governments grant tax incentives to foster the creation of employment for the governed. Deviations from that goal should be looked at as failure to live up to the terms of a contract. Penalties and interest should apply.
Additional changes to the legal climate. The foundation on which I build my entire position is the thesis statement of this essay – that job layoff is the paramount threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the typical American. As these are God-given, Constitutionally guaranteed unalienable rights for citizens of the U.S., there should be some framework for civil litigation as a means of allowing ordinary citizens to protect themselves from civil rights violations like loss of a living wage. Whatever economic damage is suffered by an individual as a result of a corporate layoff should be reimbursed to that individual, along with appropriate legal fees, penalties and interest.
Taking this further, if necessary. RIF layoffs destroy individuals, shatter families, injure communities, damage governments and cripple economies. Applying the term “will and pleasure” to workforce reductions, as corporate entities tend to do, is very revealing of the relative consideration given these actions and their consequences by the executive class. The United States of America is a nation born from the idea that, as a last resort, oppression and rights violation can and should be met with physical, military revolution in the name of freedom. The freedoms to earn a living wage and raise a family are just as important as the freedoms we’ve stood up for throughout history. When wealthy corporate executives inflict damage on us, our communities and our way of life, sometimes it might become necessary to retaliate. History has demonstrated that people will only put up with so much.
From the perspective of the employee, job layoff is the paramount threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. From the modern executive class POV, it’s hardly anything more than tossing out the trash while laughing all the way to the bank.
I advocate adding balance to this inequity by any means necessary.
That’s right. You heard me.
Free market incentives to retain workforce? Sure. And if that doesn’t work, I’m sure Santa will bring us all new jobs.
I believe regulatory means are necessary. Big, nasty regulatory means. Mandated pay equity. Huge, unfriendly public audits of profit-taking activities. Established and enforced maximum executive/labor compensation ratios – and I’m not talking 500:1 here either. More like 5:1 max.
Other regulations I’d like to see developed:
Layoff tax. Corporate entities would owe a definable value to some government body representative of the residential tax base of the laid off employees. Some restitution to the State government whose tax base is crippled by unemployment with an assignable cause on a per employee basis. Additional restitution to incorporated municipalities, if the terminated employee resides in one. By basing the restitution values on number of dollars in compensation reduction, a cousin of this tax could be applied to any pay reduction activity, including salary cuts and reductions in work hours. This would serve to make that executive trip to the bank not quite as funny, while providing economic incentive to corporate entities to inject more responsibility into layoff activities.
Reimbursement of tax incentives. Any tax incentives a company receives for initiating business activities in a given area should be required to be accounted for and reimbursed to the government entity who granted it for any reduction in employment for the constituents of that government by that corporate entity. Governments grant tax incentives to foster the creation of employment for the governed. Deviations from that goal should be looked at as failure to live up to the terms of a contract. Penalties and interest should apply.
Additional changes to the legal climate. The foundation on which I build my entire position is the thesis statement of this essay – that job layoff is the paramount threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the typical American. As these are God-given, Constitutionally guaranteed unalienable rights for citizens of the U.S., there should be some framework for civil litigation as a means of allowing ordinary citizens to protect themselves from civil rights violations like loss of a living wage. Whatever economic damage is suffered by an individual as a result of a corporate layoff should be reimbursed to that individual, along with appropriate legal fees, penalties and interest.
Taking this further, if necessary. RIF layoffs destroy individuals, shatter families, injure communities, damage governments and cripple economies. Applying the term “will and pleasure” to workforce reductions, as corporate entities tend to do, is very revealing of the relative consideration given these actions and their consequences by the executive class. The United States of America is a nation born from the idea that, as a last resort, oppression and rights violation can and should be met with physical, military revolution in the name of freedom. The freedoms to earn a living wage and raise a family are just as important as the freedoms we’ve stood up for throughout history. When wealthy corporate executives inflict damage on us, our communities and our way of life, sometimes it might become necessary to retaliate. History has demonstrated that people will only put up with so much.
Thursday, June 09, 2005 at 9:53 AM
l o v e b i r d
Every day now, since I’m five
I wonder what keeps us alive.
I grew up with Russian missiles
Hanging up above my head.
I built rockets, Sunday science
Fueled by all the fear inside us
Every day was cartoon monsters
Camelot was long-since dead.
Under blankets I would see
A future of uncertainty.
Another talking cartoon dog
Will help me shake this vibe
Another can of Ravioli
Waiting for my brand new box
of brightly colored plastic things,
I build a future out of blocks
I build a life based on belief,
On faith in finding sweet relief
From all the tightness in my chest
I only want to breathe
I know you will be here someday,
I wait for you to come and play
I left you back in that old tree
So many years ago
Feathers brush against my soul
Your fingers reaching out through time
My heart beats air like pounding drums
Or wings against the morning sky
Every day now, since I’m small
I’ve known two things were mine.
They raced toward me while I ate
And slept and passed the time
The string that ties us loosened
As I felt you coming close
I knew that you would win the race,
The darkness rounds out second place
We become the finish line
And all that used to steal my breath
Has lost its power over me,
My leggo future comes to be
And now I know that other runner
Still approaches just as ever
Thoughts that took my cartoon pleasures
Animated anxious measures
Fear that held me down at five
and smacked my face at twenty-nine
can do its worst now, I don’t care.
I’ve found my breath inside your hair
We’ll know when the race is ending
I’ll lay down inside your heart.
We’ll wait it out with our flesh pressed
And wake up in our treetop nest
for my beautiful wife, Mandy.
Every day now, since I’m five
I wonder what keeps us alive.
I grew up with Russian missiles
Hanging up above my head.
I built rockets, Sunday science
Fueled by all the fear inside us
Every day was cartoon monsters
Camelot was long-since dead.
Under blankets I would see
A future of uncertainty.
Another talking cartoon dog
Will help me shake this vibe
Another can of Ravioli
Waiting for my brand new box
of brightly colored plastic things,
I build a future out of blocks
I build a life based on belief,
On faith in finding sweet relief
From all the tightness in my chest
I only want to breathe
I know you will be here someday,
I wait for you to come and play
I left you back in that old tree
So many years ago
Feathers brush against my soul
Your fingers reaching out through time
My heart beats air like pounding drums
Or wings against the morning sky
Every day now, since I’m small
I’ve known two things were mine.
They raced toward me while I ate
And slept and passed the time
The string that ties us loosened
As I felt you coming close
I knew that you would win the race,
The darkness rounds out second place
We become the finish line
And all that used to steal my breath
Has lost its power over me,
My leggo future comes to be
And now I know that other runner
Still approaches just as ever
Thoughts that took my cartoon pleasures
Animated anxious measures
Fear that held me down at five
and smacked my face at twenty-nine
can do its worst now, I don’t care.
I’ve found my breath inside your hair
We’ll know when the race is ending
I’ll lay down inside your heart.
We’ll wait it out with our flesh pressed
And wake up in our treetop nest
for my beautiful wife, Mandy.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005 at 2:11 PM
s i n c e r i t y
I don't watch much reality TV. Ok, I hardly watch any reality TV, unless you count Unsolved Mysteries. Robert Stack is a personal hero of mine because he manages to somehow keep it real even though his script contains no fewer than 3 repeated occurrences of the word "poignant" per show.
Survivor. Give me a break. What's the appeal of this show? Somebody educate me...This program has absolutely nothing to do with survival, and it makes precious little reflection of any element of the human condition. It's less "real" than the "Real World", for Pete's sake.
If I was creating a show which was called Survivor, and was being marketed to the viewing public as a show about human resourcefulness and endurance in the face of adversity, I would favor a format like this:
Contestants would be selected and dropped off in a remote wilderness location with the exact same supply package as everyone else. The only way a contestant could be eliminated from competition is by resignation or death. The last contestant in the competition wins the entire purse.
One component of the program most DEFINITELY NOT included in my proposed format would be formal group identity.
"Tribes", or any formal team selection of any kind would not exist. If alliances are formed and broken on their own, so be it. Strategy would be up to individual contestants. If a group of contestants decided to pool their resources and/or live in a communal arrangement, that would be their option. Conversely, if a contestant decided that isolation and toughing it out on their own was the best course to pursue, that would be fine too.
Extending this philosophy, contestants could decide whether to expend energy and resources making life uncomfortable for other contestants, thus choosing the path of conflict. In the end, it would be interesting to observe whether the "live and wait it out" mindset prevailed over the "make war and win quick" school of thought.
Another element of the program that would have no place in my conception is the formal event structure. As a matter of fact, the less "official contact", the better. There would be no rounding up of contestants to compete in retarded challenge competitions. If the idea is survival, then let the idea be the show. No crappy version of University Greek Week Olympics would be forced on the contestants, and no additional supplies, comforts, benefits, perks or bonuses would be made available to any contestant for any reason. If they didn't bring it, they can build it. If they can't improvise or do without, then they can quit.
That would be a program worthy of the name Survivor. The present incarnation is more aptly named "Retarded Junior High School Camp Out".
Then there's American Idol. For God's sakes, the ideal of an American entertainment idol isn't reflected in how precisely a performer can fit into a pigeon-hole stereotype. If anything, that might indicate a significant reserve of talent, and absolutely no freestanding direction or creativity with which to implement it. I refuse to believe that the ideal American entertainer is an automaton, so lacking in sincerity and vision that they might be easily programmed by experts in shoveling "product".
Watching Idol last year, I was somewhat encouraged by the notice taken of William Hung - the UC Berkley Civil Engineering student and ghastly performer who was struck down in preliminary auditions. Simon Cowel stopped his terrible rendition of Ricky Martin's She Bangs with the question "You can't sing, you can't dance, what do you want me to say?" Hung replied with dignity "I have given my best, and therefore have no regrets".
Evidence of Hung's 15 minutes still abounds in the media, and while the spectacle was a little disturbing, there is more value in it than a thousand seasons of Idol. He was the highlight of last year's "Worst Auditions" show and received audience questions at the end of the show. When asked how he was progressing through the UC Berkley engineering curriculum, he replied that he was struggling as an engineering student, as he seemed to be in so many of his ventures, but that it was important to continue to struggle, and to not give up, because it built the kind of character necessary to eventually suceed.
His sincerity and optimism make him the closest thing to an American Idol to have ever graced that shitty soundstage.
I don't watch much reality TV. Ok, I hardly watch any reality TV, unless you count Unsolved Mysteries. Robert Stack is a personal hero of mine because he manages to somehow keep it real even though his script contains no fewer than 3 repeated occurrences of the word "poignant" per show.
Survivor. Give me a break. What's the appeal of this show? Somebody educate me...This program has absolutely nothing to do with survival, and it makes precious little reflection of any element of the human condition. It's less "real" than the "Real World", for Pete's sake.
If I was creating a show which was called Survivor, and was being marketed to the viewing public as a show about human resourcefulness and endurance in the face of adversity, I would favor a format like this:
Contestants would be selected and dropped off in a remote wilderness location with the exact same supply package as everyone else. The only way a contestant could be eliminated from competition is by resignation or death. The last contestant in the competition wins the entire purse.
One component of the program most DEFINITELY NOT included in my proposed format would be formal group identity.
"Tribes", or any formal team selection of any kind would not exist. If alliances are formed and broken on their own, so be it. Strategy would be up to individual contestants. If a group of contestants decided to pool their resources and/or live in a communal arrangement, that would be their option. Conversely, if a contestant decided that isolation and toughing it out on their own was the best course to pursue, that would be fine too.
Extending this philosophy, contestants could decide whether to expend energy and resources making life uncomfortable for other contestants, thus choosing the path of conflict. In the end, it would be interesting to observe whether the "live and wait it out" mindset prevailed over the "make war and win quick" school of thought.
Another element of the program that would have no place in my conception is the formal event structure. As a matter of fact, the less "official contact", the better. There would be no rounding up of contestants to compete in retarded challenge competitions. If the idea is survival, then let the idea be the show. No crappy version of University Greek Week Olympics would be forced on the contestants, and no additional supplies, comforts, benefits, perks or bonuses would be made available to any contestant for any reason. If they didn't bring it, they can build it. If they can't improvise or do without, then they can quit.
That would be a program worthy of the name Survivor. The present incarnation is more aptly named "Retarded Junior High School Camp Out".
Then there's American Idol. For God's sakes, the ideal of an American entertainment idol isn't reflected in how precisely a performer can fit into a pigeon-hole stereotype. If anything, that might indicate a significant reserve of talent, and absolutely no freestanding direction or creativity with which to implement it. I refuse to believe that the ideal American entertainer is an automaton, so lacking in sincerity and vision that they might be easily programmed by experts in shoveling "product".
Watching Idol last year, I was somewhat encouraged by the notice taken of William Hung - the UC Berkley Civil Engineering student and ghastly performer who was struck down in preliminary auditions. Simon Cowel stopped his terrible rendition of Ricky Martin's She Bangs with the question "You can't sing, you can't dance, what do you want me to say?" Hung replied with dignity "I have given my best, and therefore have no regrets".
Evidence of Hung's 15 minutes still abounds in the media, and while the spectacle was a little disturbing, there is more value in it than a thousand seasons of Idol. He was the highlight of last year's "Worst Auditions" show and received audience questions at the end of the show. When asked how he was progressing through the UC Berkley engineering curriculum, he replied that he was struggling as an engineering student, as he seemed to be in so many of his ventures, but that it was important to continue to struggle, and to not give up, because it built the kind of character necessary to eventually suceed.
His sincerity and optimism make him the closest thing to an American Idol to have ever graced that shitty soundstage.
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