The Stupids

They are everywhere
Their thick brains
Firing off
Thicker thoughts

They wander everywhere
Onto TV screens
Spouting inanity
In an inane world

They hurt everything
Killing without any reason but hate
Hating without any reason but fear
Fearing for no reason

They follow us everywhere
Pushing their nonsense on us
Expecting us to act upon
Their nonsense

Yes, we are right
They are everywhere
Zombies out to make the world their own
We are right to be afraid

Yet we are so, so wrong
For we are not more than they
We, too, are stupid in the world
We, too, rationalize our own thinking
We, too, believe that only we are right
We, too, want everyone to act as we do
Where we all go wrong is in
Thinking we know everything.

Why I Love GRIMM

Although I watch television oh so rarely, I've had two shows this year that have maintained my interest, "Grimm" (Friday nights on NBC) and "Once Upon a Time" (Sunday nights on ABC). In the past, as with such shows as "Kings" and "Crusoe," it may mean my current addictions will be cancelled, but after seeing the latest "Grimm," I hope they aren't with all my heart.

Soooo dreamy!  (Courtesy of NBC)

Those of you who've been reading my blog for years know my particular appreciation of beefcake. Now, Nick does not fit the typical (he isn't Crusoe, after all), but he has gorgeous eyes and long eyelashes, dark hair, and an overdeveloped sense of duty, just like the Hubby. Very, very appealing. So far, the show has been more like a cross between "Law and Order" and The Sixth Sense, only he sees the beast in those around him instead of ghosts. Nick's a Grimm, you see, destined to fight the beasties out in the world, or at least in Oregon, where he works as a police detective.

It's been appealing so far, but I actually watched last week's episode TWICE. No joke. And I want to hug the person/people who wrote the teleplay for it--GOOD STUFF. Danger, sexual tension (that's pretty new), destruction on a different kind of scale, suspense through the whole creepy episode. Brilliant. Loved every minute of it.

Now, don't jump the gun on this, though. Don't go to the link above and watch the latest episode. It won't be half as cool if you haven't seen the show before. Go back and earn this episode. Watch at least two or three other ones, preferably all of them. Just like you shouldn't skip to the end of the book, you shouldn't skip around here, either.

Come to think of it, why do people skip to the end of a book? I HATE knowing what's going to happen, even with a short story. If some of you fine readers are also skippers, can you share some insight?

And watch "Grimm." Please. For once I'd like something I adore to last on television. It may very well be the first series I actually buy on DVD.

The Capacity for Stupid

The idealist in me would love to believe humans are high up in the intelligence chain. I'd love to see the world as enlightened, see our journey through life as one where we start out perceptive as children and learn so much as adults that we see the world truly by the time we meet our end.

My fiction--both the stuff I write and the stuff I love to read--is infused with this hope, that people can learn from mistakes, rise above their limitations, discover the world is more complex than they once believed, grow, and even teach each other so that the world as a whole is a better, more intelligent place.

But then, with a shock, I come back to reality. Honestly, all I need is a few sound bites from political candidates or potential voters, religious zealots or raving lunatics, who all seem to love news cameras, to realize that all people are not on the journey towards enlightenment.

Unfortunately, it gets worse and hits me closer to home. I woke this morning to find my children watching Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred and I cannot help but wonder who my children will be as adults. Right now, it seems their capacity for stupid things is unquenchable. They adored the first Fred movie. ADORED it. I found it so stupid it was unwatchable. And they loved it.

Will their capacity for stupid increase? Will they become one of the willfully ignorant, spewing utter nonsense because they have lost the ability to reason? Or will they grow out of their delight in the ridiculous and find logic a better companion? Will they ever be able to evaluate the world properly, or will they wallow in the inane? Certainly, most adult programming on television serves the tastes for stupid. Watch most reality TV and you'll see stupidity at work in nearly all of it. It's almost enough to lose hope.

All I can do is look back to my own childhood. With humility, I remind myself how addicted my siblings and I were to "Popeye" cartoons, and "Scooby-Doo," and "Smurfs." Somehow I turned out fine. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did, and I can only hope and pray that my children make the same leap, fulfilling my hopes for a world where at least some people can move beyond the stupid and embrace the intelligent.

What did you love as kids? Am I panicking over nothing? Are my children doomed? (Okay, don't answer that last question... since it's none of your business.) Really, what do you think?

All Things Austen

[Note: For the next few posts--or however long it takes me to come down from my manic high--I'm going to be posting all about the stuff I LOVE... and if you prefer depressing, angst-ridden posts by me, you'll need to scroll down a few days (I have plenty of them to spare, I'm afraid). I'm too happy to be sad right now.]

I, like many women adore Jane Austen. Unlike some, I cannot say I'm a fan of the dresses usually displayed in illustrations and films. Instead, I love the manners, the characters, the walking around fields and other stuff that seems to happen. Vacuous? I beg to differ. I am many things, but not vacuous. Besides, I adore so much related to Austen's books, and I've recently found reasons to adore them even more.

I've long kept my heart Austen-centered, for I watched the original PBS version of Pride and Prejudice when I was in my teens, read the book, and read it again (and again, and again). I read it in graduate school, and realized at that point that the PBS version didn't do the book justice at all.

But then A and E's version came out--you know the one I'm talking about, with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Dreamy, dreamy, dreamy. I taped it all, then bought the VHS set, and a few years ago my brother bought me the 3-CD Special Edition. I've watched it every few months or so ever since the movie came out originally. It is by far the best version ever made. I also adored Gwineth Paltrow as Emma, the best version of that book I've seen. The film adaptation of Mansfield Park actually improved on the book, so I've seen that one several times over, too.

Recently, though, other Austen wonders have come out--not adaptations of the original novels, but new takes on the themes which run through them. PBS presented a delightful if impossible spin on Pride and Prejudice called Lost in Austen, taking the life of a woman fascinated with Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy character and turning it into a romp through the book, changing events in hilarious ways. (Yes, hilarious. Not just cute or quirky. Laugh out loud funny.)

And recently, I've read Shannon Hale's novel Austenland, a more realistic (sort of) exploration of a fictional "resort" for women who love Jane Austen's time period and characters. The resort goers dress in period costume, participate in pastimes of the period (lots of walks and whist), and mingle with paid actors who pretend to be "types" from the books. Several of my friends read the book as well, and we all wonder whether such a place exists. (It doesn't, at least not that I know of. Yes, I looked.)

So, there it is. And since many of my readers are men, don't think you'll be left out in future posts, for I have many other things I love to discuss. Besides, you could learn a lot from Mr. Darcy.

The End of Kings

I watched the last episode of Kings last night, viewing what is likely the best drama series this season (perhaps for several seasons, honestly), a series that took more money to make than most and had abysmal ratings from the very beginning. I've blogged about it before, so my regular readers will not be surprised. Watching what I knew to be the last episode, though, was pretty depressing.

Eight episodes of Kings. That's all I got! And while glorified soap operas, predictably trumped-up reality TV, equally predictable (and not funny) sit-coms, and even vacuous shows about vacuous housewives with too much time on their hands receive huge ratings, my beloved show--featuring perhaps the most compelling story I've seen in a while, presented by phenomenal actors through a magnificently written script--never grabbed the attention of most viewers. Most people never even tuned in. Those who did, and there were only a few, likely found the dialogue too advanced for their comprehension. So the series failed. 

This is not like my eye-candy beefcake series of last season. This is no Crusoe, consisting of two harmlessly buff bodies involved in various pirate-caused adventures that have nothing to do with the original book. I never said that show was great film making. I just loved it despite my knowledge that it wouldn't last and didn't have much more than visual appeal to offer. But Kings had everything: suspense, drama, beefcake (there was a pretty girl in it, too--just ask my hubby), romance, mythic parallelism, depth, intriguing characters, politics... the list goes on.

More than anything, it had a great script. I would love some day to write a script like that one, or even half as good. Yet the series failed. Why, oh why, doesn't someone start the Smart Channel, a TV channel just for actually intelligent people who don't find reality series (or fictional series) about petty people with petty lives, petty ideas, and petty differences appealing, but who gravitate to films and shows which actually use a little brain matter?

Maybe that's it. There isn't such a channel. Perhaps that's why I watch so little TV in the first place... the "boob tube" is for boobs. 

Can you tell I'm bitter? I can't wait for the DVD of the eight episodes to come out. I'm buying it.