Come On Bring A Friend! Adventure Time: Come Along With Me

You may or may not have watched ‘Adventure Time,’ either the original series on Cartoon Network and Hulu, or the spinoff on HBOMax.

You should. You don’t need to be a child, or in an altered state to enjoy it.

I’m way behind the show, near the end of the second season, but it’s a delightful chillout, featuring quirky characters, deceptively cute art design and delightful music.. both instrumental and with lyrics. This album features mostly instrumentals.. with the exception of a cover of the opening and closing credit songs. The closer- ‘Island Song’ in all it’s simplicity, is one of my many favorite songs. Playing it invites thoughts of spring, and escape from whatever stress you may be fleeing or not yet able to flee.

There’s a great video of the song that kind spoils the show.. so, let’s just hear the song.

There are multiple albums of songs from the show, which I might binge buy at a later time. Do you need to buy this album if you aren’t a fan of the show? Maybe not, but regardless of whether you watch the adventures of Jake The Dog and Finn The Human, this is an enjoyable, atmospheric album.

Oh, and watch the show. You’re welcome.

Artist: Various
Album: Adventure Time: Come Along with Me (Music from the Original TV Series)
Year: 2018
Date Listened in Tour: 3/2/21
Rating: ****
Best Songs: Island Song

Happy New Year… Let’s talk about Filtered Art.

So, been forever since I blogged. I’ll get back to Tory Amos in the GrandTour, but it’s kind of dispiriting to track the decreased level of love I have for her work.

We’ll get to that in another post.

I’ve been watching Season 1 of ‘Mozart In The Jungle,’ and been enjoying it. I stayed away from it for a  couple of reasons. First, the ads made it seem far too precious. Instead, it’s delightfully messy, and even if not a work of greatness, is fun and has some soul. And it gets enough right about the struggling artistic life… especially the ongoing struggles to keep going at the artistic life at all levels… to put up with some moments where suspension of disbelief gets really.. hard.

Have fun with it, don’t think too hard.

My other problem, is my difficulty with live classical music. Similar to my difficulty with many films before 1945, or authors who write like they were paid by the word- Dickens, Melville and Tolkien  – I can’t digest live classical performance in the wild.

Live classical music can work for me… but not at the orchestral level. Give me a soloist, a duet, a small room performance, I can grok. But sitting in a huger performance place while enough people to man a destroyer just sit there infront of music stands… I’m bored to tears, can’t follow it. Part is classical not being one of my musical languages, the other is most classical doesn’t affect my physically. I can’t dance or move to it… not even a head bop.

But, good film or tv about classical music, which shows the process, or filters the live perfomance… you could say ‘digest it for me’ if cruel… I can get into. And thus, ‘Mozart…’ It’s not going to get me to a symphony orchestra any time soon, but at the very least helps me feel some of the joy of listening to it or creating it.

It’s like wine. I’ve tried, it doesn’t speak to me, but a good sangria… it’ll do.

‘Mozart In The Jungle’ is not a good sangria, but better than a decent wine cooler.

On that note, onto 2017.

 

One of the joys of watching TV is noticing actors and tieing them to others. As EW has mentioned, just about everyone will or has walked through the Stargate. When watching ‘The L Word’, I love picking out the actors who have appeared in both shows. ( Galactica and L Word are both shot in Hollywood North, or Vancouver.)

In the season premiere of Life, there are two actors who have played characters with close personal ties to Shane.

You tell me.

Background to Gossip Girl- OMG, YOU TRAMP

While I’ve drifted out of the realm of acting as my allegedly primary career, I still do the bit of background work that flits my way. It’s fun, you get some good conversation, eat way too much, and pick up a couple of extra bucks here and there.

Sometimes you even get to actually act.

I’ve done some shoots recently, and heard some really crappy things about a show I really dig.

I’m thrilled that Gossip Girl is shooting in NYC. It needs to be shooting in NYC to be anywhere near authentic. Well, authentic as a show like GG can be.

But the way they’ve been treating background is just plain crappy.

First, they’ve finnaegled some SAG concession that allows them to pay extras like, $98 bucks a day. That’s before taxes and what not.
And the expenses of maintaining the clothes you need to bring to fit into the the GG world.

Next, to save bucks, they’ve had actors who appear in scenes with principles mime their responses, and then loop in voice overs later.

You see this 2 or 3 times in the season two episode, ‘The Dark Night.’ Anypoint in the show where you see a featured actor talking to someone, and the reply sounds like it’s either the voice of god or someone speaking in a completely different room.

This may mean they don’t have to give the extra a bump to featured background, or avoid a waiver, or what ever. It’s save some bucks, and screws actors out of a chance to get some bucks, maybe even a role they can honestly put on their credits.

Instead of the way we all not so-subtly inflate our rolls.

GG isn’t the only show doing this, and in all fairness, a lot of this is from… well… gossip in holding.

I also get that GG and the CW are so frigging desperate for cash that they have to cut corners to just stay on the frigging air.
But W.W.D.H.D. if he saw the corporate bigwigs, pushing drug abuse and irresponsible sex, consumerism, AND screwing the little guy in the process?

Well, he’d likely write about it in his diary and be mocked by B, but he wouldn’t like it.

No,sir, he wouldn’t like it at all.

Some Men of Summer TV

TV has changed for the better these last couple of years. No, really.

Basic Cable has emerged as the best place for new, scripted television. Writers have to show some restraint, while still pushing the envelope. Better still, there are new shows or seasons launching round the calendar. You want something new? Wait a day or two. Somewhere on basic cable, a new show is being born. If it’s any good, there’s a good chance you can get at least two or three seasons out of it,

Unless the show is Blade, it’s on Spike, and it’s so successful in the wrong demos the channel kills it than rather admit chicks might watch your network.

My two favorites of this season? One new, one returning.

The new discovery is ‘The Middleman.’ From tv Show to comic and back, this show is chicken soup for the geek soul. It’s written by geeks, and like Stargate at it’s best, recognizes geeks will watch it, and will be two steps ahead of the writers if they aren’t careful. The acting of the leads is strong and understated, the humor and pathos heartfelt. More importantly, characters grow from episode to episode. Matt Kesslar’s Middleman, while not perfect, really tries to be the hero he thinks he should be. All the same, he’s still learning.

Natalie Morales, she’s just plain fun. They are slowly upping her glam factor… the fact that she can be a full blown hottie as opposed to a major cutie is saved for strategic and appreciated moments… rather than have her turn from temp into uberhero over night.

Ok… she mastered the martial arts overnight, but hell, it is a tv show. It also gets away with entendres and some subject matter you would not expect to see on the former 700 Club channel. Speaking of which, when are you guys at ABC finally going to give Pat Robertson and the cultists the big brush off? Go on, you got better lawyers than he does. Have some fun.

This is a show with a caring heart beating in it’s camp and scifi covered chest. It deserves a long run.

The returnee, well, MADMEN, of course.
There’s been some talk of a Madmen backlash, which I haven’t witnessed firsthand. And I was worried after the first episode. It seemed way too slow, even for Madmen. But things picked up quickly. Don’s struggle to be a good man, however faltering, is compelling. His conversation with his son as in “Three Sunday’s” is heartbreaking.
Never mind the rest of the characters struggles. Peggy’s relationship with Father Gill is something I hope to see more of. Not only is there a nice undercurrent of attraction, but he’s actually helping her as a priest, nudging her towards accepting the child we’ve found has been taken from her custody. I’m not saying we won’t see any grand tragedy later on, but it’s nice to see a good, Catholic priest on TV helping his flock.

While hardly obscure, these are two shows that give me hope for tv,  and gratitude for basic cable.

Oh, and FX? You need a better successor to The Shield than Damages. Get cracking.

About Flashing Time…

A brief note. A happy, brief note.

According to Syfy Portal (http://syfyportal.com/news424879.html), the SciFi Channel quietly canceled “Flash Gordon.”

Honestly, that’s not how it should have been done. This show was so amazingly awful, it made the “Black Scorpion” tv show look mediocre. Besides the obvious success stories (“BSG” and the ongoing decent if not incredible “SG” franchise) SciFi has at least tried to keep airing some great but unsuccessful shows. ( “G vs E”,”Invisible Man”,”Farscape” being worthwhile efforts. And if memory serves, at least one season of “Sliders” aired by Scifi was decent. )

But then there’s the crap. (The other Scifi produced seasons of “Sliders”,the final season of “Andromeda”, any ‘reality’ show they air, etcetera and so forth.) As I paraphrase from a Wired article a while back, they make a lot of cheap product that just enough people watch, that they can make money on it.

But of all the crap they made, “Flash Gordon” was among the worst. Badly acted, directed, sucking all the pulp glory out of the property, and so clearly “Canada passing as America” it made Stargate’s constant use of the same damn forest look like a brilliant idea.

They shouldn’t have let it die quietly.

They should air, on regular intervals, an apology for allowing it to ever reach the airwaves. Development execs who allowed it to live should be kneeling, spreading ashes on the faces, keening with regret. They should be made to clean and light scented candle’s around Buster Crabbe’s Star on the Walk of Fame.

Forever.

Like, after man has fallen, and Will Smith and Vincent Price and Charlton Heston are fighting to be “The REAL Last Man on Earth”, Scifi will have to maintain a monastic order, who knows not why they do it, but maintains and defends the mysterious star of Buster Crabbe, using hardware from the “Lost World of Man and Mass Market Media” as weapons against the mutant hordes.

I’m not asking them to guarantee decent, watchable TV, or give up on ECW wrestling, but at least that monastic order idea would be a way to start building back Karma for Flash Gordon.

Religious Tryants and Warriors and Indian Rockstars, oh MY!!!

Yesterday was an interesting if stranger than usual day in NYC.

To start, as you probably know, the UN is in general session, and President Ahmadinejad of Iran raised a ruckus by trying to go to Ground Zero ( didn’t happen, thank goodness), and going to speak at Columbia University.(did happen, not sure if thanks are really necessary to anyone.)

Outside of showing the world again why you don’t want crazy national leaders get access to nuclear weapons, what else was achieved? Did Columbia’s President pull the best punk’d ever by inviting a world leader into an open forum and totally dissing him? Did Ahmadinejad’s yes man get around to spinning to him how he’s on his way to being the next Noam Chomsky?

Much ado, not much achieved.

On the way home from work, I took a long walk, and stumbled into the Best Buy on Madison. And a huge video crew. And craft services. And… G4TV?

Seems they were filming the Halo 3 launch countdown. And well, what did we learn?

Morgan Webb… pretty in person. Honestly. Sometimes media types just don’t look that good when you see them in the flesh. She does. Didn’t her hear through the noise, but it was a pleasant surprise.

Adam Sessler… tiny, but much healthier looking than you would expect. It was interesting watch him psyche himself up. While I’ve enjoyed the show, I actually gained a little more respect for him as a professional. He was in a small crowd, keeping a high focus and cooling without being rude to people around him.

I know X-Play is a show about video games, most of which I will never play, and G4 is the home of the worst repackaging of old Trek, EVER, but seeing these people work… they got work ethics, people.

The event was only moderately nuts. Some crowds outside, people milling about inside. ( Sorry… I didn’t try to grab anything and run. I’ve got my PS3 and I’m fine.) I’m just wondering why of all the Best Buy’s in New York, they picked this one.

It was an odd transition. From talk of a religious zealot to hype for a video game that features the destruction of religous zealots.

So from there, I wandered down to Bryant Park. And saw a minaret. And a Quatar Air buses. And pounding drums and a strange rap/rock sound coming forth.

This was worth a look.

Turns out there was a big Indian Culture event going on – http://www.bryantpark.org/calendar/thisweek.php- and I was watching some kind of ‘fusion band.’

Honestly, I’ve heard some better Bollywood tunes, and the lead singer was way too into MC Hammer’s old clothes for his own good. But the crowd dug him. Sang along with him, feeling the beat…

The only time I felt so out of place at a concert was seeing the Barenaked Ladies after Billy Bragg opened for them at the Beacon Theater in NYC back around 1995, and watching hundreds of Canadian ex-pats go insane while a bunch of guys ran in place at keyboards

No… I was far more wierded out by the crowd at the Barenaked Ladies show.

So a combination of events even stranger than your usual day in NYC.

Gotta love this town.