[Sunday Night Update: I’ve changed the title of this entry and pulled up some text from “below the fold” — i.e., the dividing line between what you see here on the page and the “Read More” section — because I realized that this entry really isn’t so much about finding a new blogger as it is about my reaction to him, and my three loyal readers might not have been getting that point. Or maybe they were and didn’t care. Whatever. The point is, I made a couple of changes…]
I’ve run across something that may interest fans of the TV series Lost: the show’s supervising producer, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, maintains his very own LiveJournal. You won’t find much in the way of insider info or spoilers on upcoming episodes — he doesn’t seem to write about the show at all, at least not in the half-dozen entries I’ve skimmed — but he is an articulate fellow with some interesting opinions.
I’m actually rather envious of his abilities. Take his entry on the demise of Star Trek, in which he says pretty much the same things I did, but with a bit more flair and precision than I think I managed to summon. For example, I loved his description of the depressing opening night for the final Trek film, Nemesis, when “manns chinese theater theater [was] only half-full with the last remaining faithful who, like brezhnev-era muscovites, dragged themselves out into the cold to vote in yet another meaningless election.”
That’s sharp writing (even if he does have an eccentric take on the rules of capitalization), and I envy it because he found a perfect simile to describe the emotional tone that I struggled to capture and never did get quite right, at least not in my own opinion.
Javier goes on to describe the folly of The Franchise thusly:
The Franchise eventually became the televisual equivalent of wal-mart. monstrously bloated, consistent to the point of tedium, overshadowing other, more original work… a monolithic loaf of wonder bread with little to recommend it other than widespread accessibility.
what was once quirky, challenging – and respectably reflected the flaws of its creators in a charming way – became flawed in ways that reflected lack of institutional respect, corporate groupthink, and a desire to wring every last cent out of the product without concern for the future. a grim and ugly, faceless plastic colossus set on auto pilot by indolent company men all too happy to prey on the goodwill of the willing masses.
star trek was once that scrappy little main street restaurant where you could get something spicy that may not have always satisfied the palate, but at least gave you something to talk about on the way home.
The Franchise given its death blow today was a squalid little street-corner mcdonalds that no one bothered to clean or upkeep because the head office did a cost-benefit analysis that indicated that the expense would have outweighed the profit.
Yep. Envy…
