Stratford-On-Hellmouth

One of the many reasons I adore Twitter is the way the hive mind can concoct some amazing things. A good idea can become a great idea can become something truly gazoinksbo, in the best possible way.

In that spirit, I give you a sampling of how I spent much of Monday evening with a group of Twitter comrades. In the wake of the news that some of the Joss Whedon Players have made a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, we naturally took it upon ourselves to cast some of the Bard's other works with our favorite denizens of the Whedonverse. And Christine Becker, who curates the wonderful @GoodTVeets, was there to chronicle the wackiness.

Check it out, shan't you? And then be sure to follow all these participants on Twitter, so as not to miss out on the next bout of inspiration that strikes we few, we happy few, we band of Scoobies.


UPDATE 11/3/2011: This carefully curated bit of tomfoolery is now available in Tumblr form, with all the original participants playing along.

In which I make my podcast debut

Do you enjoy reading about TV, except for the part where you have to read? Then why not try a podcast instead! In the inaugural episode of the ChicagoNow TV Tandem, Julie Hammerle of Hammervision and I gab about the season finale of Breaking Bad, the return of The Walking Dead, our favorite new shows of the fall, and just why Julie and the rest of femalekind insist on oppressing hard-working white men like me and Tim Allen.

A version should also be available through iTunes shortly. Check it out, and feel free to send questions, suggestions, or cookie recipies to chicagonowtvtandem@gmail.com. We'll hope to make these podcasts a regular feature, so listener feedback will go a long way. You may even receive a cut of our profits!*

*Editor's note: Our profits are zero.


Listen to the ChicagoNow TV Tandem podcast, Episode 1

The Vast Wasteland on the radio tubes!

On September 25, I was invited to appear on Blog Talk Radio's The Down and Dirty with Frank Fontana, discussing fall television. Starting at 26:40 in the clip below, I talk with the show's hosts about some of the season's early storylines, including Ashton Kutcher's debut on Two and A Half Men, Ted Danson joining the cast of CSI, my distaste for Jim Caviezel in Person of Interest, and my impassioned plea for everyone in America to watch Community and Parks and Recreation.

The Craftsman World of DIY Presents The Down and Dirty 09/25 by Down and Dirty | Blog Talk Radio

AOL's Patch, HBR, and sustainable local journalism

Last week, Maxwell Wessel posted an entry on the Harvard Business Review’s blog network critiquing AOL’s strategy for Patch, an experiment in local news aggregation that is currently a rather high-profile drain on the company’s coffers. I appreciate the thesis of the post: that rather than ignore or discard Patch, AOL should invest in it more intelligently.

Why you'd rather be killed by a Mayan prophecy than a French psychopath

In the latest installment of  The New Cult Canon (a feature you should be reading regularly at The A.V. Club), Scott Tobias examines the grisly French horror film Inside, and questions how viewers gauge what is "too far" when it comes to representations of violence and death in movies. He notes how often people are repelled by the visceral depiction of individual deaths in horror films, but shrug off the far greater lethality implicit in end-of-the-world blockbusters from the Michael Bay or Roald Emmerich mold. Writes Scott:

As a rule, I’m reluctant to draw any hard lines on what horrors are beyond representation, because I recognize how subjective that can be. For example, I find the trailer for 2012 far sicker in its bloodless apocalypse fetishization than anything I’ve ever seen in “torture porn” genre, but clearly that opinion isn’t shared by the legions who gave a pass to the former while routinely turning up their noses at the latter.

Something something "write stuff" pun

As a writer, one of my strongest and most well-practiced skills is talking myself out of writing. This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the lamentably sparse updates of either of my blogs lately (hey, I had one good week in July there!) Oh sure, every now and then some diaphanous wisp of an idea floats into my head and I manage to mold it into 900 words of reasonably entertaining prose. But for every one that somehow sees the light of day, three or four others vanish ignominiously into the ether, having inspired little more than a few illegible scribblings or incoherent out-loud sputterings.

It's a discouraging state of affairs, and one I'm inspired to improve after attending a class/discussion group on blogging last night with genuinely accomplished blogger & writer Kate Harding, at Story Studio Chicago (a terrific resource for you fellow Windy City wordsmiths). In that light, I've decided that step one is identifying the most common—well, excuses is such an ugly word; let's call them "perfectly sound and logical counterarguments"—which lead me to abandon a potential piece of writing:

• Somebody must have already made this exact point. Probably better. And if not, they will.
• The DVR's at, like, 64%.
• What sentient, literate being would ever even want to read this misshapen jumble of quarter-baked doofusery??
• Hey, 18 new tweets!
• Yup. This is it. This one would wake them all up to the reality that I am a hack and a charlatan. It must be buried and forgotten. The illusion of my competence must live another day!
• Welp, this Dragon Age quest ain't gonna play itself.

Other creative types, please feel free to chip in with your own favorite self-defeating tactic.

Programming Update

Cory Barker, impresario of the excellent site TV Surveillance, welcomed me to guest on his regular feature Test Pilot. Check out our thoughts on the pilot episode of the classic late-1980s drama thirtysomething.