Rantings of a Young Man in Flux

Greetings adoring masses.

It’s odd feeling guilty about my infrequent updates considering all of six people and one monkey actually take the time to read these damn things (and the monkey only found me on accident), but considering the past couple months have been nothing short of epic in their significance, I have to say I’m due for a serious update.

I think my entire family has been in decompression mode over the past two to three months. With Andrew out of harm’s way, or at least out of firing range, everybody has taken a moment to get used to living without The Hum, or at least getting used to The Hum on a different frequency. So, the habitual e-mailing has stopped. The phone calls have become as infrequent as they were when Andrew was overseas. And I think most of us, sadly, pay shameful little attention to the news now that we know he won’t be on it. I’m sure my brother keeps good tabs on his guys, but when they come back in November I’m sure he’ll put on the blinders like the rest of us.

All of this has had a disastrous effect on my blogging. I’m sure this is merely an inevitable valley after being at peak operating status during Andrew’s deployment, and I’ll get back to a more modest writing frequency in time. However, setting up a blog for my brother and I to share was perhaps overly optimistic. I still have hope for it, especially after Andrew knocked me out of the Fantasy Baseball playoffs last night after I manhandled him throughout the regular season. We’ll see if he jumps at that opportunity. Sadly, after sending us war stories for seven months, I understand all too well how anything we could write now will inevitably seem embarassingly pedestrian.

On that note…

A few weeks back I posted a brief blurb on my promotion from studio crew bitch to photo-journalist (newsroom bitch). Well, since then I’ve exhausted myself with training and the station bureaucracy. I worked a number for 12-14 hour days on both sides of the line, keeping my normal schedule on studio crew while training with the news folk.

I’m not a person who handles being “in flux” very well, and thanks to the childish animosity between news and production I’ve essentially been in that state since I received the promotion. It’s hard to tell if the lack of consideration my transfer has garnered is apathy on the part of my superiors, or perhaps that’s just the status quo. I don’t handle disorder well, and working without a regular schedule without knowing when certain logistical priorities will be worked out has driven me slightly mad. My training has been largely improvised -- I set my own schedule around my time in the studio -- and after my first bad night on the Highlight Zone this past Friday it became readily apparent that its been inadequate as well.

If there’s a silver lining to that disaster it’s that nobody noticed but me. This is good in that it clearly wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, but it was bad in that I was furious about the staggeringly low quality of my work. I think most people see me as a fairly low-key, even keel Joe. Well, that even keel has a lot to do with apathy. I’m not going to get riled up over something I don’t give a shit about. Unfortunately, I’ve finally landed a job that I want to excel at, and I will be very unhappy any time I turn in something less than stellar. And Friday was certainly less than stellar. It’s a tale I’ll happily tell again over Thanksgiving dinner, but the wound is still fresh and my knuckles can’t take any more wall-punching.

So, this post was originally going to be a brief heads-up about some upcoming entertainment offerings, but… you know… tangents. Anyway, let’s get to the task at hand.

-- Tonight, my favorite new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip debuts. I’ve watched the pilot three more times since writing up my first review, and I’ll watch it again tonight (it’s in HD after all). I love love love this show, which makes me worry that it’s too smart to find an audience (Sports Night anyone?). So, I beg you to give it a chance. You don’t even have to give the full episode a try. If you get through the powerful opening and the introduction of Matt and Danny (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) without being as smitten as I am, then you’re welcome to change the channel. Although I don’t think you will. Also coming later this week are the season premieres of two of my favorites: The Office and Grey’s Anatomy -- both on the same night, Thursday.

-- Last week Nintendo announced the release date and price for its new console, Wii. To give you an idea of how much I’m looking forward to this, I already have enough store credit at GameCrazy to get both the system and the new Legend of Zelda game for free. I can’t rationalize my excitement for this -- I haven’t yet played anything on the system -- but it is what it is, and I won’t apologize for it. Of course, it’s not going to help me find a girlfriend.

-- The most important event this week occurs on Tuesday -- the release of Battlestar Galactica season 2.5. This is, without question, my favorite television program of all time. I realize I gave that title to Lost a year ago, but watching Battlestar while my brother was away at war -- nothing could match the relevance and poignancy of this program in the context of our own political realities. This is just about the toughest sell I could find when it comes to recommendations, but I’m going to try by demolishing some of the misconceptions you might have about this show.

First, this is not the Battlestar people remember from twenty years ago. Today’s Battlestar is gritty, dark, and relevant in a way no show could have been in the 70’s and 80’s. Second, get over the genre. At its best, science fiction is unmatched in its ability to wield allegory as a weapon, and no science fiction work in the past twenty years has a sharper blade than Battlestar. This show makes you think unlike any show in recent memory. Questions like “Who are the good guys?” and “At what point do the good guys become bad guys?” never get asked in your standard television fare, but in Battlestar, these questions are the heart of the show. To call BSG a watercooler show does not do it justice. This show could be the basis for a college political science course. That’s how smart and complex it is.

This show will break your heart, quicken your pulse, and test your beliefs in equal measure. This is must see television of the highest order. If you have Netflix, put BSG at the top of your queue. You might just be caught up by the time it returns in the first week in October.

You can thank me later.