The Followspot

This American Life

The news lately -- some sad, some farcical, some infuriating -- presents a target-rich environment for any blogger. The only problem is, "Where to begin?"

Lately every other day, it seems, has been punctuated by another celebrity death. I am totally mystified by the prolonged brouhaha over Michael Jackson's demise. I thought The Freak Show that was M.J. for the past twenty years was barely on the radar anymore. Who wanted to hear about a disgraced, unsavory pedophile addicted to self-mutiliation and an infantile grandiosity? Apparently, half the globe. Now there's a tidal wave of distraught fans ready to immolate themselves on his funeral pyre in an elaborate parody of grief? Sure, as long as the cameras and helicopters are hovering over the writhing, narcissistic mob.

Then there's the latest episode of America's Gubernatorial Freaks, the smash reality show wherein state chief executives from around the country vie for the title of Biggest Horse's Ass. Thrill to the spectacular idiocies of "Macaca" Allen, Elliot Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich, and the latest contestants -- Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin. Talk about a cage match! Just when you think you've seen the ultimate in addled egos from "Bull of the Pampas" Sanford, Madame Moosejaw Palin comes along and blows him away with a single insane presser/pity-party.

You settle in for a prolonged mocking of one elected hypocrite and before you know it, another comes along. Or a mega-celebrity death pushes the lucky pol off the front page.

Oddly enough, the one death that saddened me the most was that of pitchman Billy Mays. Some people found him totally annoying. Many more -- myself included -- thought of him as an American original. I could count on seeing Billy almost every day on tv, pitching OxiClean or Kaboom from his roster of household products, and somehow I trusted him. I never ordered anything on the phone -- the S&H charges are where the sellers make their money -- but I have bought OxiClean and Kaboom in stores. And they work!

Billy wasn't a distant, surreal celebrity like Jackson. He wasn't an ancient icon finally leaving the scene like Ed McMahon. He was the typical overnight success who worked 25 years to get there. His new reality series on Discovery, "Pitchmen", was surprisingly enjoyable.

Billy was the king of the two-minute infomercial. He was unmistakable: "Hi! Billy Mays here for OxiClean!" His voice was a gravelly shout. His smile was eye-crinklingly happy. His hand gestures were pitch perfect, pun intended. He'd reach out with both hands as if he was grabbing you by the lapels and drawing you close to him. And he always wore the uniform of the Everyman: blue shirt open at the collar, khaki pants and sneakers.

He was only 50 years old, far too young to go. He worked with his son, Billy Mays III, from his first marriage. He had an adorable three-year-old daughter from his second marriage. The people surrounding him weren't delusional egotists, sycophantic courtiers or fame-whores. They were ordinary Americans like you and me.

Billy was astonished and thrilled that he was living the so-called American Dream. He was a very rich man when he died. It's too bad he didn't have more time to enjoy his success but I believe he died a happy man. I've been surprised at the depth of affection I grew to have for Billy and his pitches. I miss him already.

Today's miserable earwig

Believe me, I'm not touting McDonald's Filet O' Fish sandwich; it's at best an approximation of food -- a fish facsimile. No, I am evilly casting my earwig onto you. Now you too can burst into "Gimme back that filet o' fish" at odd moments throughout your day. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-haaah!

Nature, the night and Battlestar Galactica

 
The women of Battlestar Galactica 

My family and friends indulge my obsession with "Battlestar Galactica," the epic story that will soon come to an end on the SciFi channel. Critics and fans have pleaded with the uninitiated to forget the campy 1970's original and join in watching this mythic "re-imagining" by Ronald Moore and David Eick.

There are myriad reasons to watch BSG: First, there's the powerful ensemble acting from a wonderful cast lead by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. There's the collection of strong, kick-ass women in a society that has given up gender discrimination. There's the consistently amazing scoring by Bear McCreary. Then there's the story itself -- a post-9/11 saga of the near-extinction of humanity following a genocidal attack by the sentient machines man himself created to make life easier. The remnants of human society subsequently retreat across the galaxy, ever hunted and harried by the humanoid Cylon machines, in a desperate search for a planet named only in their religious scriptures -- "Earth".

 
A signpost -- the 12 Constellations, supposedly as seen from Earth

In lesser hands, this would be the stuff of the typical space opera, filled with noble heroes, weird-looking aliens and ray-guns. "Battlestar" is, instead, gritty, bleak and filled with the fears and longings of a beaten people hanging onto to life by a thread, always in danger of running out of fuel, water and food. A dead fighter pilot's belongings are routinely auctioned off to the highest bidders. A prize for finding a habitable rock to land on will be the last tube of toothpaste in the universe.

There are no magic technological fixes when these people get into a bad situation. They get hurt, they are scarred, they die. The fleet, under the protection of the Battlestar Galactica -- a sort of space-faring aircraft carrier -- set out with 50,298 survivors. As the hastily-sworn-in president of the 12 colonies, Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) says: "The human race is about to be wiped out. We have fifty thousand people left and that's it. If we want to even survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out of here and start having babies." And there you have the backbone of the story. Along the way, the refugees must continually answer the question, "Are we worthy of surviving?" By last Friday's episode, the last before the two-week, three-hour finale, the survivor count was down to 39,521.

Tonight, though, I'd like to write about how I found a wonderful book through "Battlestar Galactica." You see, last week's episode was titled "Islanded in a Stream of Stars." I thought it was a beautifully poetic phrase and it's been one of the pleasures of the series that the writers typically reference a wide range of cultural touchstones. Then on one of the many blogs and sites devoted to BSG reviews and analysis, I found the source of the title. It's from "The Outermost House," by Henry Beston. Subtitled "A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod," it's apparently one of the great American works of nature writing. I had never heard of it (there are a lot of things I've never heard of, to my chagrin) but I had to buy it immediately. Here is the enchanting passage that inspired the episode title:

“When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience.”

The book arrived today and I'm just filled with happy anticipation to hold such wonderful writing in my hand and sadness and loss that this beautiful Galactica saga is coming to an end. Do yourself a favor. Get the pilot miniseries, included in the Season One package, and start watching from there.

Talk about your "high concept"

Wikipedia describes the Hollywood definition of "high concept" as "a term used to refer to a succinctly stated premise describing the overall idea of a production in just a few sentences or less."

The same notion applies to the guide on your television screen, usually just a few words to give you the gist of the story.

The other night, while I was idly cruising the list, I was stopped dead in mid-click of my remote by this:

A jazz trombonist meets a diner waitress, then picks up a pay phone and hears there's a nuclear war.

Would you have watched it???

Super Bowl XLIII

It's a good Super Bowl when the game is better than the ads. Tonight's game was the best kind -- the lead seesawed between the Steelers and the Cardinals literally until the final seconds. Who could say which play was more thrilling: Cardinals linebacker James Harrison's astonishing end zone interception and run back 100 yards for the touchdown or Roethlisberger's touchdown pass to Holmes in the end zone that turned the game around for the Steelers. Then there were the many penalties and personal fouls on both sides that threw the advantage back and forth. Great game.

A lot of the ads were meh or jes' plain dumb -- which is surprising when the sponsors are paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.7mil for 30 seconds of airtime. There will never be an ad as revolutionary as Apple's "1984" ad introducing the Macintosh. There were a few tonight, though, that I liked a lot. (Please note, this does not constitute an endorsement of any product, although I like Coke better than Pepsi and buy Pedigree kibble for my dog. I also prefer safe tires to baldies and free Hulu videos even though they're turning my brain to mush.)

Blogrolls, foodie sites and Lewis Black rants about milk and water

Ellen has suggested we put up blogrolls so I've been assembling a list that she would call a proper gallimaufry. Everybody has the NYTimes, Digby, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos and the rest of the usual suspects. But how many include a blog dedicated to the finer points of pizzaria pizza by the slice?  Or Bear's Battlestar Blog, written by Bear McCreary, the composer of Battlestar Galactica's music?

I have a lot of sites bookmarked. A lot. I visit most of them only rarely, if at all, so it's been fun to rummage through the forgotten stuff in the attic. I'm including several sites on the blogroll because they're worth a look-see.

You can tell a lot about a person by the stuff he or she keeps -- hidden in the closet, stuffed in a totebag, ripening in the back of the fridge or populating a bloated Favorites folder. So it's rather personal to admit that along with dozens of news and political commentary sites, I've bookmarked loads of recipe/foodie sites, obsessive fandom television sites, and a hodge-podge of quirky backwaters I've stumbled upon that were somehow amusing or profound. The signs of an undisciplined mind and too much food and sloth are revealed. Sigh. 

Which brings me to this gem I found while rummaging around (Warning: NSFW due to very naughty language and a lot of it.):

An Eternal Trek, Together

News comes today that Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, together will boldly go where no one has gone before.

Gene Roddenberry, wife to spend eternity in space

LOS ANGELES – The creator of "Star Trek" and his wife will spend eternity together in space. Celestis Inc., a company that specializes in "memorial spaceflights," said Monday that it will ship the remains of Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenberry into space next year.

The couple's cremated remains will be sealed into specially made capsules designed to withstand the rigors of space travel. A rocket-launched spacecraft will carry the capsules, along with digitized tributes from fans. The Roddenberrys' remains — and the spacecraft — will travel ever deeper into space and will not return to earth.  [...]

After Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, his wife commissioned Celestis to launch a part of his remains into space in 1997. She died Dec. 18, 2008.

Anyone who hasn't been deaf and blind to American popular culture of the last forty years knows that Gene Roddenberry was the optimistic visionary behind the Star Trek franchise. It's the true fan geek (guilty!) who knows it was Roddenberry's wife, Majel Barrett, who was in many ways the true voice of "Star Trek."

Majel was "Number One," the first officer of the Enterprise on its maiden voyage in the series pilot, "The Cage." The NBC suits hated the idea of a pushy woman (and the producer's girlfriend) cast in a position of authority and so she was demoted to playing Nurse Chapel in the original series.

Her Trek role with the most range was as the overbearing, emotionally needy Betazoid mother of "Next Generation's" Counselor Troi. Barrett infused the character of Lwaxana Troi with humor, infuriating smugness, and a thoroughly human desire to love and be loved. She chased nearly every man who crossed her path, from Captain Picard to Odo, "Deep Space Nine's" changeling constable.

Those characters were behind her, but her continuing role as the Voice of the computer in every iteration of the USS Enterprise will be impossible to substitute with any satisfaction for the fans. When Majel Barrett died last month, I knew an era of our culture had closed. Bon voyage, Majel and Gene.

 
Majel and Gene on the bridge of the USS Enterprise