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The summer before I began sixth grade, I started staying up late.  I would watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, followed by Late Night with David Letterman.  I preferred Late Night.  It was quirky, while The Tonight Show was, in my child mind, too middle-of-the-road.  But I remember watching Johnny Carson’s last episode, and David Letterman’s first episode of The Late Show on CBS.  I never got into Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.

Shortly after high school, I began avidly watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien.  It was the wackiest show around, and it perfectly reflected the sense of humor my friends shared.  I spent years staying up until 1:30 in the morning watching that show.  In one episode, Conan talked about (fictional) guests he wouldn’t have back.  One was named “Johnny Airhorn”, and he had a helmet with two airhorns mounted on either side.  Whenever Conan would try to ask him a question or say anything, Johnny Airhorn would blast his horns in deafening fashion. Unfortunately, these old clips are impossible to find.

Miraculously, one of my favorites is on YouTube.  I’ve posted it before, but it’s a perfect example of what Conan does so well.  The premise alone is insane, and the execution is perfect.

Tonight is the premiere of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Andy Richter is back, Max will be there, and my hopes are high.

Filed under: Comedy, Dana Heritage Project, Television on June 1st, 2009 | No Comments »

A baseball player with a .500 batting average would be MVP, but I don’t know if that standard holds for television.  And I know one program that is just that hit or miss:  Masterpiece Theater.  As I wrote recently, Tess of the d’Urbervilles was splendid, but the Wuthering Heights which followed was lousy.  Three weeks ago they began broadcasting Sense and Sensibility, and it was excellent.  The cast–especially the actress playing Elinor Dashwood–was super, and, as you’d expect, the costumes and sets were enchanting.  In the screenshot you see here, Elinor has just received Edward’s proposal.  She had until moments before believed him to be married to another woman, which had broken her heart.  But, as it turns out, that other woman had married his brother instead.  When Elinor hears Edward say that he is, in fact, not married, she is overcome.  What made the performance so affecting was the way the actress playing Elinor went from a placid expression to full-on break-down in an instant.

Last Sunday night, Masterpiece began broadcasting Oliver Twist, and it is, I am sad to say, awful.  Scenes important in the book are excised, others not in the book are invented, as is much dialog.  The characters do not seem at all like what I pictured from reading the novel.  Worst of all is the ridiculously anachronistic soundtrack.  There are screaming electric guitars.  I suppose you could point out that almost every movie set before the eighteenth century has a soundtrack that is not, shall we say, historically informed.  But Oliver Twist is set smack in the middle of the Romantic era, and it would have been so much less distracting to use acurate music.

So, I am a bit worried for what the rest of this season has in store.  Meanwhile, note to self:  if you ever become penniless, chose to live in the charming Devonshire countryside instead of putrid London.

Filed under: Literature and Books, Television on February 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

As I wrote back in December, the February deadline for transition to exclusively digital TV signals is near.  Or it was, until this afternoon when the stupid house of representatives passed a bill to extend analog broadcasts through June.  On the News Hour just now I saw stupid Maxine Waters up there saying something to the effect that, “people are going to be so confused when their TVs stop working”.  Probably.  But guess what?  That’s the only thing that’s going to prompt some people to get the converter they need.  Pushing back this transition is only going to make things worse.  For a year now, stations have been running PSAs telling people the switch was in February.  TV stations had been planning to stop broadcasting, and now they’re going to have to keep running an extra tower for the tiny population (something like six million people) not yet ready.

This is such a stupid idea.  Mark my words: come June, the same people who are not ready today for the digital switch will still not be ready.  Only having their TVs go blank will motivate them.

Filed under: Current Events, Television on February 4th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Before I became a British Literature major at the University of Florida, I had seen few episodes of PBS’ Masterpiece Theater.  I cannot recall what, in particular, induced me to watch a 2005 broadcast of Bleak House, but it was marvelous in every way.  Recalling how well the filmmakers had adapted Dickens, I resolved to watch as many productions as I could.  Unfortunately, Masterpiece Theater isn’t always classic fiction.  For quite some time last year they broadcast episodes in their “Contemporary” series.

I was thrilled, then, to see that the new year brought with it new adaptations of nineteenth century British novels, beginning with Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.  It was fantastic.  The acting, sets, costumes and cinematography were all splendid.  It was truly affecting.  I had high hopes for Wuthering Heights, but alas, it was terrible.  Aside from the odd aspects of the filmmaking itself, the story was twisted and modified in really pointless ways.  It’s not hard to see why a filmmaker might choose to eliminate the dual narrator technique Bronte adopts.  What works in a book doesn’t always translate well to the screen.  So, Nelly Dean was just a minor character in this production, and Mr. Lockwood didn’t appear at all.  Much of the plot was compressed, and some of my favorite scenes from the book were jettisoned.  Most of Healthcliff’s evil machinations from the book were glossed over, and others not in the book were invented.  The conclusion was not right at all.

I’m crossing my fingers for Sense and Sensibility next week, and four Dickens adaptations.

Filed under: Film, Literature and Books, Television on January 28th, 2009 | No Comments »

I will likely never be a rich man.  But if I were to have sufficient means, I would do this:

Find the world’s experts in every field pertaining to the humanities, from history to art to religion and so on.  I would seek those whose expertise was married to a powerful communicative skill, who could really convey their knowledge in a way that a layman like me could understand.  These would naturally be educated people in considerable demand at institutions of learning, and/or authors of books, without much free time.  So, I would need ample resources to hire them to be my tutors on a series of worldwide learning expeditions.  For instance, I would hire a geologist, a botanist and a zoologist to take me on a tour of the great national parks of the world.  I’d hire some professor from Oxford or Cambridge to take me on a tour of every historically significant place in England.  I’d go to China with a team of experts who could teach me about the people, the places and the heritage of that country.  And so on.  I’d have places I’d want to go, of course, but I’d rely on these experts to tell me the things I ought to see, because–and this is true of all of us–I don’t know what I don’t know.

I thought of this just a few minutes ago as I was watching a new PBS series called The Story of India, hosted by Michael Wood, whom I remember from another excellent series, In Search of Shakespeare.  He doesn’t present himself as an expert.  Rather, he’s merely an intellectually curious man who gathers information about the world around him, and regurgitates it in a way that lazy slobs like me can understand.  In The Story of India he travels the country, focusing on some important topic (Buddhism in the episode I just saw), and visits sites important to the subject, talks to people who know about it (the Dalai Lama, for instance!) and relays this learning to us in a way that makes sense and is entertaining.  It’s edutainment.

So, wouldn’t you love to tour Luxor or Giza with an Egyptologist?  Or walk the halls of the great art museums with an art historian and a curator.  Music is my forte (rim shot), but I’d still find it immensely rewarding to attend an orchestra season in New York with a musicologist from Julliard.

There’s a lot a man can learn from books.  But staring agog at the Colosseum with a guide book in your hand cannot compare to having an archaeologist, an architect and an historian take you on a little walk.

That’s what I’d do with my money.  That and a solid gold house.

Filed under: Musings, Television, Travel on January 6th, 2009 | 1 Comment »