zonkered.net

I’ve had this post in mind for weeks now, ever since I read this article based on comments made by J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon, but I haven’t gotten around to it for one reason or another, and honestly, I wanted to mull over these thoughts a little more.

They’re talking about serialized television, and how networks don’t want serialized television anymore – and I think they’re right about that. Networks, in general, don’t want the Lost, or the Dollhouse. They don’t want shows where missing an episode means missing an essential piece of the puzzle – they don’t, in fact, want television where the premise of the show is the puzzle. And the reason for that is because viewers have grown tired of that particular formula – or at least tired of the way it’s dominated in the past several years. It wasn’t that long ago when it seemed like every new show was a serial, a show that was finite and structured like a novel, and as a form, that kind of tv requires a commitment that can get wearying for the casual tv watcher after several years of it.

What really sticks out for me, though, is this quote from Abrams:

“I’m just less personally interested, naturally interested in non-serialized shows,” Abrams said. “I enjoy the investment and the anticipation and the characters and what’s going to happen… To me that’s the thing that always grabs you. I think they want [serialized stories] too — they just don’t know it. When they talk about stories, stories imply time and progress.”

He’s correct, of course. Stories do imply time and progress, but the mistake he’s making is in assuming that the only way for a story to progress is through the serial format, and that’s not the case at all; if it was, no one would write any fiction that wasn’t in the novel form.

I think that Abrams and Whedon have both forgotten about, or are underestimating the episodic format as a vehicle for stories. It’s true that episodic television has a conflict and a resolution in each episode – it could be a case, a relationship dilemma, whatever – but thinking that  this limits progress in a story indicates that the two of them have forgotten that the most engaging, enthralling part of the story is often not the plot. It’s the characters. And it implies that they’ve forgotten that one of the strengths of good episodic television is the ability to carry at least two stories at once: 1) the episode’s conflict and resolution, and 2) the larger arc, the conflict and resolution that will stretch throughout several episodes or even the entire series.

This can be done explicitly, as in the first and best season of Veronica Mars, where Veronica was solving cases on an episodic basis but was also looking for who killed her best friend Lilly. Or in White Collar, where there’s a case of the week, but there’s also the overarching themes of Kate and the music box. Burn Notice, where Michael Westen spends the first several seasons trying to find out who burned him while taking very odd jobs in Miami.

But it can also be done implicitly, and it can be done well implicitly. I’m thinking Criminal Minds here, particularly. The series is about the case, and the case rarely lasts more than one episode – there are exceptions, of course, especially the Foyet arc of last season. At the same time, the cases and the characters’ reactions to the cases provide a vehicle for growth and progress, and it’s shown. Dr. Spencer Reid is far from being the same man we met. Derek Morgan is far from being the same. All of the characters have changed and grown, and even though Criminal Minds is a procedural that practically defines the standard of episodic television, there is a story there, and one that’s grown over the five years they’ve been on the air. The same can be said of shows like NCIS and CSI. These people have changed throughout the shows’ runs, and that makes them their own kind of stories.

It’s fine if these aren’t the stories that JJ and Whedon want to tell – and if movies are better vehicles for what they want to do, then they should focus on movies – but that doesn’t make the form used to tell these stories less valid. It is, after all, the form that stories have taken on television for many years, and it’s one that still has legs.

It’s apparently Pride Month. I didn’t remember, or know, but it does make sense that it would be June: that’s when the Stonewall Riots were in New York, and that was certainly a major turning point in the struggle for rights. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about the accusations of trivialization that I’ve seen thrown around lately in several places.

See, here’s the thing. It’s Pride Month, which means there’s parades and festivals and articles, and this year in particular you have people coming out. Vanessa Carlton told her audience at Nashville Pride Fest that she’s bi. Christina Aguilera has said she’s bisexual. Cameron Diaz said that she’s been attracted to women, and overwhelmingly the reaction that I’ve seen on the blogs has been twofold. First, yeah, you have the people celebrating, and congratulating the celebrity about coming out…and then you have the other half, the ones who define a celebrity coming out as a form of famewhoring. Particularly if they come out as bi. I mean, really. They don’t really like the same sex; they’re just doing it for attention.

Lovely, people, really.

Beyond the celebrity connection, there’s also been a lot of sneering at the idea of girlcrushing (or…boycrushing, I suppose, I’m not a guy, so I’m not sure what they call it) because it’s totally just a play for attention, and they’re just gay lite, or doing it to make the dudes hot, and they’re trivializing the LGBT cause!

No. Actually. They’re not. I’m a bisexual woman. I figured out I was a bisexual woman because I’d girlcrushed on so many actresses that it made me realize I was actually attracted to women.

I’m also a semi-closeted bisexual woman. I’m out on the internet (and getting more out on the internet as we speak) but I haven’t told my family, and I’m not sure how. And stupid or not, every time a female celebrity comes out as bisexual – whether it’s Vanessa Carlton or Christina Aguilera or Anna Paquin – and has a generally positive reaction, it makes me think I could tell my own mom without it being a huge deal.

Bisexuals are not attention whores. Famous bisexuals are not famewhores. Bisexuals are people who happen to be attracted to both males and females, and frankly, it has nothing to do with you.

I’m developing sort of a thing for blazers and jackets. It’s weird, because I’ve never been that into them before.

I own, like any sensible person who works in the semi-corporate world and has to go on interviews, two suits that include jackets. One’s tweed with a pencil skirt and mandarin collared jacket; the other is basic black with a gored skirt and velvet details. They don’t, in all honesty, see a lot of use. I wear the tweed pencil skirt a lot in the winter months, but my office is on the extremely casual end of business casual – I wear jeans a couple of times a week and once spent an entire week wearing flip-flops while recovering from nasty sunburn gained on a trip to Portugal. No one cared. We are not a formal office – just ask the consultant across the room in the board shorts.

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This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Jezebel put up an interesting post last night about nerds, and what is and isn’t a nerd, et cetera and so forth. I didn’t comment then – I’ve found myself commenting less and less on blogs lately, not that that has anything to do with this – but after ruminating on it last night, I commented on it this morning.

And now I’m posting about it. Because that’s how I roll.

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There are some days when I click on links even though I’m fairly certain they’re going to make me sigh. Maybe it’s because it’s a slow day at work – it is, today, and also one of those days when one wishes one could just be outside in the gorgeous weather – or maybe it’s out of sheer curiosity.

Ginandtacos.com‘s article Pretzels and Spite is a good, interesting blog with excellent points. I enjoyed reading it, but I keep coming back to one thing: The unencumbered free market is only good at one thing: lowering prices.

Perhaps this is true – something that’s certainly up for debate, and something that I, with my degree in economics (with a concentration in finance at that; I know, however do I live with myself) don’t agree with – but it’s not even an assertion that’s demonstrated in the example. The airline industry isn’t unencumbered; in all honesty, the “unencumbered free market” doesn’t exist in this or any other capitalist country. How can I say that? Because we have government regulation. Every capitalist country has some degree of government regulation, and there isn’t an industry that’s untouched by it.

To continue with the airline industry example, yes, price regulation has ended. But after 9/11, it was replaced with a who slew of other kind of regulations that affected airline practices, affected and continues to affect airline customer experience, and undeniably affect the bottom line. People don’t fly as much as they otherwise might. It’s a pain in the ass. It’s also something the airlines can’t directly do a thing about, and thus in order to stay solvent they have to cut amenities.

It sucks, but it isn’t an unencumbered free market.

This is not to say I’m against government regulations – I wrote my economics thesis on environmental regulations and the use of emissions trading to meet said regulations – but simply to say that we don’t have a true free market. Period. And I don’t think we should, but equally, we cannot judge what an unencumbered free market can accomplish when it doesn’t exist.

My feet are perpetually a mess. I guess I can blame this on the fact that I walk everywhere, on city sidewalks, in dress shoes – that certainly part of the problem – but I’ve always been prone to thick calluses and dry skin and heels that have gone beyond dry to cracked like the Grand Canyon.

I’ve used a lot of things on them. The most effective has probably been The Body Shop’s Hemp cream, and really, if it smelled better I’d still use it, but I have to put socks on after I use it, and then my socks smell like a boy’s bathroom in high school (you know the one. Close to the door that goes to the ag building, across from French, hugely popular with the…well. The stoners.) I’ve used Burt’s Bees foot cream but I don’t find it works as well as my mother claims it does.

I have a salt scrub that works semi-well, but needs a boost from something else.

The fact is there probably isn’t a quick-fix for this, my feet are too much of a mess for one thing to work – but I can’t keep myself from trying. So the search continues! Seeking: one lotion that slough the dead skin off my feet and moisturizes the skin without smelling like your boyfriend’s college dorm room.

…I’m doomed to fail.

You know, I’m 5’8″ tall. Okay, fine, it’s really 5’7″, but the point is I’m taller by either one or two inches than the average American woman, and yet I cannot for the life of me find a pair of jeans that are not too long. Why is this? Is there a vast conspiracy to make me wear heels with my denim, because in all honesty: No. No, that is not going to happen. I won’t even wear heels with a dress. I may wear heels when I go to opera in April, but I’ll be sitting down the entire damn time. I wear heels for interviews, which are blissfully few and far between.

I will not wear heels with bootcut jeans at work on a Monday, dammit, and you can’t make me. I’ll wear my cowboy boots instead.

Sure would be awfully nice if I could wear flats, though. Do I need to buy short length to do that?

I’ve done a lot of shopping at Ann Taylor Loft this year – sweaters, jewelry, shoes, dresses – but I’m fairly sure that this is it for the year. Appropriately, it’s a party dress that would be great for ringing in 2010 except for the facts that a) it’s not arriving until January 12th and b) I’m spending NYE on the couch.

In fact, I am not entirely sure when the next occasion calling for formalwear will even be, but let’s disregard those little details:

This is it for 2009, people. No more shopping until 2010.

I can always wear it to the opera in April, I suppose.

It’s 5:59pm on New Year’s Eve, I’m spending the night the way I usually do – at home with the cat – and since I did this last year (I think) I’ll do it again.

2009 was a fucking weird year.

Work: In October of 2008 my boss was laid off, leaving me as the one and only librarian at my company. In January, as the economy continued to crash, the entire company moved to a four day week. In May, shortly after I bought tickets for my very first vacation, they announced that we all had to take at least a month’s sabbatical. In June, my second boss was fired. A week later, I had a slightly critical evaluation from the CEO that had me on tenterhooks for much of the summer. I left the Special Libraries Association and started looking at jobs that weren’t necessarily ‘library’ jobs.

In September, we went back to five days a week, and this month I got a glowing evaluation and a raise. So, um. Yay?

Fandom/Writing: In January, I reconnected with a really good friend and we started RPing for a few hours every week. Then in March, we saw Watchmen and started RPing for several hours every single day, and I met a lot of awesome people in a new fandom. Annie and I have probably written thousands of pages, and started a spy novel. Creatively, I don’t think I’ve ever produced this much – if I have, it hasn’t been for years and years. I have written recipes for fictional characters.

Personal: I dated a few boys and flirted with one girl (so far). I went to California and met awesome people, and started to think about the possibility of relocating. I bought a lot of jewelry and clothes, showed my sister around New York in July and saw Jude Law as Hamlet in November. I got contact lenses and new glasses. I turned 29. I baked a crapload of shit, and started a baking blog.

Things I Know Will Happen in 2010: Annie and I will get The Novel written. I will see Renee Fleming in Rossini’s Armida. I’ll go to the Galapagos Islands in July. The world will continue to revolve around my cat.

Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.

Hanna Rosin’s got an interesting article in Slate’s XX about the rise of the kitchen bitch, and frankly, after reading it I’m not sure that I’d want to marry a man who likes cooking as much as I do. And it’s entirely because of what Rosin describes: I have a feeling I’d end up with a guy picking (gently or no) at my techniques, ingredients, and recipes, and it would drive me up a fucking wall.

It seems like when guys march into the kitchen, a lot of them make it a competitive arena. The ingredients have to be fresher, the techniques have to be fancier, and the tools have to be the most badass tools available for the job (I blame Alton Brown for the last. Have you seen his immersion blender?) And for myself, I tend to cook the way my mom does. I don’t have problems with canned vegetables. I do tend to bake from scratch, because I like to bake, but my tuna noodle casserole is most certainly not made with sushi grade ahi and cremini mushrooms. It’s made with Chicken of the Sea and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom. I cannot evenly chop an onion to save my life. I use pre-chopped garlic from a jar. I own a Rachael Ray cookbook.

But I still love to cook, and it’d piss the hell out of me if someone was standing over my shoulder critiquing my technique; if I wanted that, I could go to culinary school.

I’m not saying all, or even most guys are like that, and maybe I’m getting all New York Times Styles here and building a trend from a couple of random data points. I don’t really think so, though. Food Network has gotten increasingly testosteronized over the past few years – the only pure cooking show left in primetime is Good Eats, and while I dearly love me some Alton, we’ve already mentioned his propensity for superpowered kitchen equipment. Other than that, it’s approximately 10 million competition shows and a few reality shows. The faces of baking is Ace of Cakes‘ Duff, mentioned by Rosin, and the dude from Cake Boss. I don’t watch Cake Boss, but he’s a burly Italian guy from Hoboken.

The fact is that increasingly, there are less and less female voices in the culinary press and pop culture, and as a woman who likes to cook, I worry about that. Do I want to be tethered to the stove? Not really. Do I want cooking to be yet another arena where I get mansplained to? No. I’ve got plenty of those as is.