Thoughts on TV

So I was surfing around the Internet and I found www.tvtropes.org

It's a site that lists on out the various TV tropes and how they're used. Tropes, in case you're not a lit or film major, is when a genre or author or age of writing establishes a common figure of speech for its artform. For example, twin humor was a Shakespearean (and Elizabethean) trope. So was small dog humor, although Shakespeare didn't indulge in any of it. I suppose he thought it was too base (although piss and fart jokes weren't).

Anyway, I was impressed by the sheer magnitude of tropes that were already associated with television. Despite being one of the most overexposed art forms/forums, TV is still one of the newest. It's only been around for fifty some odd years (definitely less that 100), while painting and writing and films have been around for generations now. I suppose it's so wildly used because of its accessibility (how many people watch TV?) but it's still one of the least accessible mediums of art expression (how many people produce TV shows?). I was especially impressed with how many of these tropes were adapted from some of my favorite shows (Good Troi Episode, The Firefly Effect, Spikeification, etc.).

So it got me thinking: is our technology developing fast enough for our artistic notions? I mean, we've developed the tv art form, not to its impetus, but surely to some sort of plateau. I think it's a continuing art forms but the true artists are limited in a consumer driven medium like TV. I mean, Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin, 2 of the best TV writers in the business as far as I'm concerned, can have shows that are at once brilliant and yet cancelled at the drop of a hat (Firefly and Sports Night, respectively). Are we running out of canvases to paint on?

Of course, the left side of my brain piped up at that point and chastised my right brain. We've always pushed technology to its breaking point through artistic expression. Music went so far without electronics that it turned into itself again, RE: Contemporary Piano, before it found more outlets in heavy metal grunge. The born artists of any time were not simply hampered by the artistic mediums available but were forced to express creativity through the given mediums, causing art forms to grow. Can you imagine what Mozart could've done with electronic guitars? Or Leonardo DaVinci with CGI technology? But because they didn't have access to it, the expanded the art forms that were available to them. So that's what I'm waiting for in TV. Despite the fact that we've already doubled back on TV (RE: self-referential satires, such as Soap) we're still waiting for artists to push the envelope.

Anyway, that's what was on my mind.

Sup

Hi all. Still in Taiwan. Just got back from Hua Lien yesterday. It's kinda in Central Taiwan (Taipei's in Northern Taiwan). My uncle works there. He was transferred there 2 years ago (he works for the government) and has been living there on the weekday (he still comes back to Taipei on the weekends. It's about a 3 hour train ride). Anyway, we went to Hua Lien 2 days ago and spent the night in a hotel there and came back to Taipei last night. It's pretty beautiful in some of the more scenic areas. It's kind of like a little beach town, reminds me a bit of Santa Cruz. Anyway, we saw the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial today. It's huge. And, thanks to the patriotic propaganda of the memorial and an opera house next door, I've had Les Mis stuck in my head. "Do you hear the people sing, / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!" Hm... aside from that, not too much. I'm looking forward to the New Year this weekend. Should be fun. I'll be sure to take pictures and stuff. So, for now, that's it.

Formosa Friday

So, I just got back from Taipei 101. It's a 101 story building. A 101 story building. It was huge. I have pics. =P Anyway, situated within it's walls was a bookstore called Page One. This was one of the largest bookstores I had ever seen. And it was packing HELLA English books. I was in Taiwan Heaven. It even had a huge section on Literary Theory. It was quite surreal. Here I was, in Taiwan (an island nation!), standing in a bookstore looking at the largest Lit Theory section I'd seen outside of a college bookstore. I normally dislike Lit Theory (usually too complicated for my tastes) but I bought a book from the section that I'd probably have difficulty finding in any Borders or Barnes stateside (it's Wheel of Fire by Wilson Knight, in case you're really curious. It's a Shakespeare analysis book).

Article
So Massachusettes General Hospital has a surgeon who thinks that he's found a viable method of cryogenics. He's tested it about 200 times on pigs (according a Sydney newspaper) and is applying for rights to test on humans. It's actually kind of interesting. He drains the blood and stores it. Then he pumps in a chilled saline solution that cools the body down to 10 degree celsius where it loses heartbeats and eletrical impulses. He operates on the pigs and then warms its blood up and pumps it through the body again. He has a 90% success rate. What concerns me is that when the electrical impulses are lost in the brain, doesn't that mean that the mind's gone? What happens when bodily functions start again? I suppose it's not going to be figured out until human trials start (unless pigs somehow develop telepathetic communication capabilities and tell us what happens post-freezing).

Bryce Howard's been cast as Gwen Stacy for Spider-Man 3. Avi Arad's announced that Gwen survives the movie. I think he's lying. Otherwise, I have no idea why they brought in Gwen Stacy.

Along with reading a bunch of other books, I've been reading 2 Buffy analysis books. There's a book I highly recommend for Buffy-fanatics caled Why Buffy Matters by Rhonda Wilcox. It's really a good read in the analysis of Buffy. Best Buffy Book Ever? Probably.

Taiwan = unseasonably warm. Russia = unseasonably cold. Could this be the effects of global warming? We're totally screwed. It's going to say in our history books: "Human Beings: Extinct. Cause: Challenged Mother Nature and lost."

Wow, Chirac, France's president, has flat out told people that a response to terrorist attacks on French soil is nuclear weaponry. Talk about tough talk. What happens if someone calls his bluff?

Ok, that's it for now. Back to Taiwan goodness. I have a new book to read now. =P Chapter 2? It's on Hamlet. Awesome. (Ok, I'm a dork.)

DVD News

Feburary 7th - Teen Titans Season 1 comes out on DVD. That's SEASON 1. 13 Episodes in one box. That's more like it. Cartoon Network's been treating their 2 best shows right now like crap, releasing them in installments. It's good to see that they're going to treat their shows with at least some respect, allowing fans to purchase an entire SEASON instead of like 3 episodes at a time. Feburary 14th - Grey's Anatomy Season 1 comes out on DVD. DEFINITELY getting that. =P Feburary 21st - Goof Troop season 1. WAIT! did I miss something? Ducktales, Chip n Dale, Goof Troop. WHERE'S Darkwing Duck?! C'mon Disney! You totally missed out on the best Disney Adventures cartoon EVER! March 21st - Batman Beyond season 1 and Justice League season 1. DEFINITELY DEFINITELY getting those. March 28th - Quantum Leap season 4 (I'm not getting it but I'll bet I know at least 1 person who will be.) Ok, that's it for now. Some really quality shows are coming to DVD in the coming 2 months. Including some long awaited quality cartoons. MUST BUY! =P

Whee! Go Clinton!

Still in Taiwan, that's not really a surprise. =P We went shopping yesterday. That was kind of exhausting. 11 floors of department stores later and I was officially pooped. Plus the walking to and from. We also went to Taiwan Storyland. It's like an amusement park that had recreated a neighborhood from Taiwan in the 60's. Old fashioned stores, restaurants, etc. It was quite amusing. Ultimately tho, all I ended up buying was a copy of the newspaper (in English) to read. It was good pre-shopping tho. They have good stuff here and it's kinda interesting how they organize their shopping. It reminds me of a high-end flea market, even in the department stores. It's pretty cool tho because they just go all out for customers and put their entire stock of merchandise on the floor so you see all kinds of cool stuff.

I read about Hillary Clinton's speech on CNN. It was kind really cool. I completely agree with her that Bush's administration will probably go down as one of the worst ever (and so does 60% of CNN, according to their quick poll results). She also compared the administration to an old school plantation, where the voice of the dissenting minority is never heard. Good stuff.

Oh, this story caught me eye in the Taiwan newspaper: 27 year old Yang Hui-ju has "become a role model" according to the headline of the article. Apparently she paid for her tuition with the money she made by winning various Internet quiz games at the University of Queensland in Australia. Upon returning to Taiwan, she couldn't find a job so she sat around reading, including studying credit card policies. She found out that there was a loophole in the China Trust Commercial Bank card. She opened up an account and depositied NT$6 million (about $200,000 USD) and spent it all on "ETtoday gift certificates, which were refundable if they weren't used after one year." She then exchanged all of her bonus points earned through the spending on 20 EVA Airways first-class round-trip tickets to and from the US. She then sold those tickets on Internet auction sites (probably EBay =P) for NT$45,000 (about $1,500 USD) each. China Trust Bank closed her account and her parents' account and decided to sue her for fraud. What punks. What's funny is that her story got out and hella people are coming to her aid, including many consumers, lawyers, and prosecuters who agree with Yang and are offering free legal help. It sucks that they decided to go after her parents too. Her parents are retired vocational high school teachers. They told the newspaper that they trust her judgement and that Yang's told her entire family to just remain calm and it'll be worked out. By the by, the final paragraph in the article says that while studying at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, she chose to actively protest against the government's crackdown on MP3 Music downloads instead of taking part in her graduate school exams. That's one of the reasons why she went to Australia for grad school. Heh. This girl sounds awesome. I'd consider her a role model too.

The Dominatrix Case in Massachusettes just sounds like bad police work. Innocent or guilty, sounds like the police messed up. Plus, no DNA evidence so I think she's probably going to get off.

US had an airstrike in Pakistan? What are we doing? Why are we still in a war? This is ridiculous.

Golden globe winners list looked good. Mary Lousie Parker's one of my favorite actresses so it's good to see her on there. Ang Lee (Taiwan Represent!) and Brokeback Mountain took home some gold, so it's good to see there's staying power in Taiwanese directors and gay cowboy movies =P.

CNN World has an article up right now with this intro paragraph:
"'I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of mass destruction) as very high,' U.S. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Henry Crumpton was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. 'It is simply a question of time.'"
That's kind of freaky.

So, today's plan looks like more shopping. We're going to one of the places that has, according to my mom, food stands all along the street. I've been told multiple times that we can eat from one end of the street to the other. Sounds like it's going to be fun. That's it for now.

Greetings from the Far East

So, it's Taiwan here and I made it in one piece. It was kind of a hectic trip full of the usual rigamorales of international travel. BTW, a 13 and a half hour plane ride sucks. It just does. Doesn't matter what class of what airline, being forced to spend so much time on a vehicle that 1.) doesn't allow you to stretch, 2.) doesn't allow you to move (outside of walking up and down the aisles), and 3.) by all rights shouldn't be able to stay in the air, sucks.

Anyway, it's my first real day in Taiwan. We (me and my mom) arrived yesterday at 10:30 pm, spent an hour and a half in the airport getting baggage, getting out, finding transportation (if you're going to travel, try not to arrive at 10 pm on Monday night. Nobody really has time in their schedules to accomodate that), and getting back. It was like 1 in the morning by the time before we were even in my uncle's house. Still, it was kind of fun being here and being around everything. The weather here is (as my aunt told me) mysteriously warm. It was winter weather like 2 days ago but then it just bumped into early summer (early NorCal summer) weather. Plus, there's forever a sort of musky (you know that feeling atomospheric feeling like when somebody uses too much cologne or perfume?) humidity that hangs in the air here.

As it stands, we plan on doing a bunch of stuff here so I should probably get off the computer so that we can go out and start doing the shopping thing (I know! First day and we're already shopping). I'll try to blog often these next 2 weeks. If nothing else, it'll be a good record for me to keep track of what I've been doing here. (Oh, and I'm manually setting the time stamps to reflect current Taiwan time. So, don't be surprised when the thing says January 17th, for example.)

Gay Marriage

Gay Marriage is a touchy subject with some people. That's why I wanted to post this. Plus, it's funny as all heck.

10 reasons Gay Marriage is wrong:

1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

wa-hoo!!!

Heh. No work. This is awesome. I haven't done ANYTHING productive yet but it's good that I don't have to do anything... not-productive either.

For those of you curious, I spent the first day of freedom out and the second day of freedom in (so far). It's been... a good couple of days. I hope there are a couple of things I do accomplish in the next few days, but I'm not going to be too disappointed if I don't.

So, I'm here relaxing. =) Hope everybody's having a good 2006 so far.