Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Issue 1: The Tops

   For a man who enjoys thinking outside of the box, I hold very few illusions. I suppose you could say that my head is in the clouds, but my feet are firmly on the ground. I bring this up because I understand enough about human nature to realize that I may not keep up with this blog and you may not keep reading if you dislike this first "true" posting. To mitigate this, I have not only come up with a format I think I can maintain for a very long time to come, but I have also decided to include a few "easy pitches". The following media represents some of the best little secret (and not so secret) works I can think of.

The Short Version:
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Movie: Snatch (2000)
Television: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
Music: Running with Scissors - "Weird" Al Yankovic (1999)
Game: Bioshock (2007)
Book: The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman (1966)
Web: "sxephil's channel" on YouTube (2006-present)
Special - Radio: The Jack Benny Program (1932-1965)

 
The Long Version:
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Writer/Director Guy Ritchie seems to have a thing for mobster movies... and comedies. see also Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (which just might get an entry of its own one of these days) and RockNRolla.

Snatch might be called a comedy of errors in the Shakespearean sense. Told from the points of view of multiple shady characters as their paths criss-cross, the plot revolves loosely around a stolen diamond and its strange journey through the London underworld. 

This is a movie where the characters are real characters. Brick Top, Bullet-Tooth Tony, Frankie Four-Fingers. The cast list reads like a Dick Tracy rogues' gallery. If you want to see Jason Statham and Brad Pitt chew up the scenery in their earlier days (not to mention Dennis Farina, Vinnie Jones and Benicio Del Toro), check this out!

Television: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

It's coming up on 20 years since the original, mediocre movie that somehow managed to launch a truly meteoric series hit theaters and showed off Joss Whedon's knack for taking an audience's preconceptions and twisting them into interesting narratives four years before Scream made such a splash. 

The premise is simple: What if that teenage girl that runs away from the big bad vampire into a darkened alley is actually laying a trap for the unsuspecting undead? What if she is the more dangerous of the two? The answer turned out to be hilarious, poignant, touching and (for the first three seasons at least), an excellent allegory for the awkwardness of High School life in America.

If you cannot commit to watching the entire series, I highly recommend Season 3. It's Buffy's senior year and the world at large is looming before her and her "gang" as personified by The Mayor played with a special brand of brilliance by Harry Groener.
Buffy is hardly an unknown quantity in mainstream media, but there are few series that manage to pull off humor, horror, drama, and maintain popularity so effortlessly that I wanted to acknowledge all of that here. And besides, with so many new things to see, recent hits tend to fall into a weird time-hole of not being old enough to be a classic, but not being new enough that everyone has seen it in its heyday.
Also, like the undead in the title, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been ressurrected in a slightly different form. Buffy Season Eight and the upcoming Buffy Season Nine are produced by Dark Horse Comics.

Music: Running with Scissors - "Weird" Al Yankovic (1999)

Again, "Weird" Al is not a complete unknown, but he's been around for so long that I get the impression that we're taking him for granted. It has got to be a lot of work taking so many disparate musical styles and reworking the material to fit a completely different subject and still make it funny. 

"The Saga Begins" in particular is a triumph because the structure of Don McLean's "American Pie" lends itself so well to Al's lyrics (even McLean has trouble keeping the two songs' lyrics separate), and because the song was largely written before the movie was released (due to internet leaks).
Although Yankovic has produced several albums since, I still love his Running with Scissors album. And not only because the spot-on "The Saga Begins" is on it, but "Albuquerque", "Jerry Springer", "Grapefruit Diet" and "Germs" are all stellar parodies. I have yet to hear everything the man has produced, but this is the best album as a whole I've heard yet.

Game: Bioshock (2007)

Yes, it was just four years ago (or for some already four years) since Bioshock turned the first-person shooter on its ear and managed to tell a full-on story with true humanity in it. Okay, other games have managed similar feats before and since, but there was something special about the setting, the design and that unexpected twist that had every gamer who played it rethinking not just their recent decisions, but reexamining every game they'd ever played!

The story starts out so innocently: you are a man who survives a plane crash only to find himself in the ocean mere yards from a strange structure. It's the entrance to Rapture -- an underwater utopia built by a visionary who wanted to create a place where people can create without arbitrary rules hanging over their heads. Well, the place has seen better days and you soon discover that Andrew Ryan's uncontrolled freedom has indeed borne advances that the world has never seen -- and may never see due to that selfsame lack of discipline.

Tiptoeing around the plot points is hurting my head, so would you kindly play this game so I can move on to the next entry?

Book: The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman (1966)

I admit, I've never actually read a Mrs. Pollifax book. I have only ever heard the Books On Tape as read by Barbara Rosenblatt. Barbara infuses each character with such an amazing sense of realism you can tell who's speaking just by the way she changes her voice. That sounds like a simple thing, but the delivery is extraordinary. I have listened to other narrators and only Jim Dale (Harry Potter Series [US]) manages to pull abreast. I figured for my first 'book' entry I'd toss out this audio gem. It's arguably the best way to read the Pollifax books.

The setup: Mrs. Pollifax is a widow in her sixties, rather ordinary and most of all, bored. Her children are all grown and her husband passed away years ago. Spending her days tending plants on her apartment building's roof garden and volunteering her time in dozens of associations, committees and other establishments has begun to smother her sense of usefulness, excitement and duty. One day she finds no reason not to simply step off the roof and into oblivion. This life-changing event eventually reminded Emily Pollifax of her much younger self. Before marriage and parenthood informed the decisions she made for herself, she had wanted -- trained herself to be a spy. She had studied maps, languages, people and the politics of the world. Now that there was nothing holding her back, she decided to make herself useful to her country and rather boldly applied to become a covert agent. Through a most fortuitous coincidence, Mrs. Pollifax was chosen to be the perfect little "innocent tourist" for what was supposed to be a simple courier job. Bring Item X from Point A to Point B. But when Mrs. P is around, nothing is ever quite what you'd expect.


Three (or four) times a week, Philip DeFranco posts a 3-4 minute "show" where he relates whatever "mattered to him" that day. Early episodes might have focused on his personal life or things he's done/watched/played recently, but since he now has other channels for those things (the Vloggity, Like Totally Awesome), The Philip DeFranco Show is mostly about news items nowadays.

Why tune in? In addition to his self-deprecating humor, rapid-fire style and fair-minded opinions, Phil constantly invites his audience to think for themselves and not just mindlessly fall in line with popular opinion. When I first started watching years ago, Phil was working out of his bedroom on low-quality equipment and thinking about quitting. Now, thanks to YouTube's monetization programs and his continuing popularity he has his own office, he gives away prizes a couple of times a week, he's broadcasting in hi-definition, and he's making deals with folks in the film, gaming and internet industries. DeFranco has developed his own little empire on YouTube, and continues to produce quality short-form entertainment.

Special - Radio: The Jack Benny Program (1932-1965)

Yes, friends, that is over THIRTY YEARS of comedy gold across both radio and television. The Jack Benny Program has had many incarnations, sponsors, and broadcasters over the years, but the comedy has always been stellar.

The premise of many radio shows was the actual creation of the radio show headed by Jack Benny himself. Dennis Day would practice the song he would sing on that week's program, Don Wilson would present his latest idea to promote the sponsor's product, and Phil Harris (Baloo from Disney's The Jungle Book) the bandleader would run a new song past "Jackson" for approval. All while Jack Benny, his butler Rochester and often Mary Livingston went about their daily lives. Sometimes the "show within a show" would be a play they would rehearse and sometimes the show would actually be "the show" if you know what I mean. 

Jack's in-show character was of a miser stingy enough to make Ebenezer Scrooge wince. He occasionally made trips to his vault for such otherwise trivial matters as to break a ten dollar bill. This vault was invariably guarded by a number of comic-sounding alarms and a live guard named Ed who doesn't even know what century it is he's been down there so long. This penny-pinching persona was so strong that in real life Jack sometimes found it hard to tip as generously as he would like. In the words of a cab driver: "It would ruin the image I have". Other aspects of the show played closer to reality. Mary was Jack's wife in reality, but played a purposely ill-defined girlfriend, secretary or personal friend on the show and film star Ronald Coleman and his wife (Jack's real neighbors) also played his neighbors on the show.
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Post Notes:

Whew! I had no idea that would be (or take) so long. I hope next week's entry will be shorter. I do have seven categories, but I would not want to have my audience tuning in daily. I've added the Short Version for those of us who want to know NOW!

While I don't want this blog to be obnoxious or garish, I wonder if a spot of color wouldn't be amiss...

Eventually, I will learn how to embed stuff, offer links and so on, but for now, Wikipedia has all that and more info on the subjects described above.

The Special category was originally just going to be Radio, but I'm going to leave it as a wild card category.

The Game Category is going to be the hardest; there are so much relative obscurity and subjectiveness involved. I expect to get the most flak from that category.

Again, I may have given myself a lofty name, but I have not experienced absolutely everything there is to experience nor to I present these suggestions as any sort of comprehensive or inherently superior catalog. These are just some personal favorites of mine and the reasons why others should seek them out.

Post Notes may not appear in future installments; I just felt the need to clarify some things.

Happy viewing,
from The Media Master
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