MY VISIT TO A TV TALK SHOW

Why do millions of people watch TV talk shows? Most of the conversations are trivial, banal, and mundane.

The guests talk about what other shows they are on or movies they are in (show biz feeding itself), where they were born and to whom they are married or whom they are dating (gossip), when they started doing whatever they are famous for, and other topics that are trivial to the rest of us.

It's all very narcissistic. They are promoting themselves and the shows they are in, or on, or directing.

These topics are not in themselves compelling or fascinating or even remotely interesting. Yet people watch. By the millions. Why?

Where do these people on TV get all that power, to command all that attention?

My theory is that the power comes from the attention itself. It's like being at a dinner party. Notice the way the center of attention moves around the room, one person telling a story, another complaining about politics, another chatting about their husband or wife or child.

We all watch and listen, and we are not just being polite. We are genuinely interested. At the moment. Why? Just because we are all paying attention. It's some kind of basic human need, to pay attention and be paid attention to.

And of course TV concentrates that power and gives the people onscreen the added aura of celebrity, even if we have never heard of them before and will probably never see them again. Just being on TV is a big deal. All those eyes on me, or you, or them. A sense of heightened awareness. A feeding frenzy of attention. We do love it, don't we, as a culture?

These TV talk shows take the place of real conversations, I think. No matter how mundane and banal they are.  

I sat for more than two hours Thursday night in a TV studio audience and watched four people have a boring, trivial, inane conversation. I laughed and applauded when I was told to, like a trained seal. I didn't eat or drink or talk when I was not supposed to.

I made nice, like everyone else. All for a TV show.

My new friend Cathy B, who likes this kind of thing, and I went to CBS Television City in LA for the taping of "Rove LA." The host is an Aussie, Rove McManus, apparently a TV star and comedian in Australia.

About a hundred people sat in the studio from about 6:30 till almost 9:00 p.m. and applauded and laughed on command (belly laugh, chuckles, louder, softer, longer) and watched a trivial conversation that was to last about an hour on the air.

There must've been a dozen staff members there, working the four or five cameras, directing the audience and the camera people, doing makeup and tending to the needs of the host and his guests.

Rove's guests were Kevin Smith, (director of "Clerks" and "Red State"), Anna Faris, cute young actress (three Scary Movies, among many, many others), and Daniel McPhereson ("Wild Boys" and several others).

We learned that Kevin Smith does a podcast every morning with his wife. Anna Faris has worn see-through panties on the sets of movies. Daniel McPhereson has worn a "cock-sock" for sex scenes, and one time the sock came off.

Oh boy, fascinating stuff. 

Frankly, my friends are more interesting. Maybe the people who watch these shows don't have any friends. Or maybe their friends are very, very dull.

I don't have the answer. But it is a strange world we live in. Attention itself confers a certain power and fulfills a certain need. Maybe we all need it, and maybe that is what this is all about.

I must admit I had a good time, like going to the zoo, to see what strange things people do.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

'I THINK I CAN'

I hate to admit it, but I've been watching "Hawaii Five-0," an action-adventure cop show on CBS.
http://www.cbs.com/shows/hawaii_five_0/

In a lot of ways it's typical network stuff. Formulaic but attractive. Pretty girls and handsome guys who can kick ass and think, too.

One thing I like about the show, and what sticks with me, is the underlying attitude of the characters. I don't know what this is called. Theme? Meta-communication? Psychological underpinnings? Symbolic action? Whatever. It's definitely part of the audience appeal.

No matter what horrendous problem the 5-0 team faces--and some of them are extreme--the team girds up its loins and tackles the problem with all biceps flexing, pretty girls narrowing their eyes and frowning, everyone kicking ass, and all technology blazing.

The story problems--essential to any show like this--include one of our heroes in prison on wrong charges, a mysterious and deadly villain named Wo Fat, plus typical cop-show cases like kidnappings and witness protection.  

I love Wo Fat as a villain. You want to say, Whoa, Fat! Reminds me of Chow Yun Fat, the famous Hong Kong action star.

This Wo Fat bad dude is handsome and seems to have his finger in every possible evil pie you can think of and some you can't.

The thing I like best about the show is the attitude of the characters. Reminds me of that kid's story "The Little Engine That Could."

No matter how big and hairy the barriers, these people think they can overcome them. You can almost hear them chanting "I think I can, I think I can" as they get shot at and knifed in the belly and misunderstood and lose their badges and girlfriends and wives and get them back.

I guess the reason this idea is so popular in pop-lit is that it makes us feel that we can overcome our problems, too. Not a bad thing in life.

Cartoonish? Maybe. But well done. The show could be called Well-Done Fun, a new Chinese name.

Should I be ashamed? Maybe, but we all have our guilty pleasures. I sure do.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

BORGES MAKES GENIUSES OF US ALL

I was just reading a story by Jorge Luis Borges, "A Survey Of The Works Of Herbert Quain."

The writer Herbert Quain is totally fictional, as far I can determine. I love it when Borges messes with your mind. In another story, he claims that a writer named Pierre Menard wrote the story of Don Quixote. Line by line, word for word. Yet original. How funny. Hilarious.

Borges reminds me of John Cage, the late avant garde composer and performer. Years ago, at UC Irvine, I saw Cage with his collaborator, the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham.

When the show started, we wandered into a small theater on the campus, a theater-in-the-round, with steps leading up to a low stage. Music playing, very low, as I recall. As if in the background.

As we were sitting there, one by one apparent members of the audience got up from their seats, strolled casually up onto the stage, and began to dance.

It was wonderful. It messed with your mind, violating your expectations. Who was next? Was I expected to get up and dance? Is that woman next to me a secret dancer? Were we all secret dancers?

I loved it.

At one point, Cage was writing things down as he was playing the piano. He invited questions from the audience. Someone said, "What are you doing?"

Cage said, "I'm giving myself instructions and following them."

People laughed. He was making fun of the whole set-up, the audience, the third-wall convention, the act of performing, the status of being either a performer or audience member, the very act of creation.

I told my friend Tim about this, and he said, "I hate that kind of thing." Of course, as he told me one time, he was missing the point.

Watching was part of the art. The audience was part of the piece, as it always is, I believe.

Borges does the same kind of thing, making fun of the whole transaction, the whole creative process of writing, imagining, reading, recreating what is imagined.

By doing that, he sets us all above it somehow, so we can laugh at it and enjoy it and admire it, all at once.

Borges makes geniuses of us all.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

THE AGE OF CRAP: GOOD VS. BAD FICTION

What do we want from fiction? Do you read novels and short stories? I do. If so, why? What do you get from that? What do you want?

I myself want several things:

1. I want first of all to be transported out of my own body and away from my own surroundings. I want to live in a fictional world for awhile. I want to escape the bounds of boring reality and live in a more interesting, more exciting and more meaningful world. I want to go somewhere I have never been and experience something I have never experienced. The word novel after all means something new.
2. I want to learn something about human nature, to gain some insight or series of insights into the human condition, to learn something about myself that I didn't know. To come away feeling like I know myself better. This is what it is like to be me. Now I know. This is what happens to people like me if we do that.
3. I want to learn something about the world at large, to gain some insight into a place and a people that are new to me. A new vision that is meaningful. Not mere escape.
4. I want to have an aesthetic experience while I'm doing all this. To revel in the use of language, to read exciting and perhaps deathless prose.
5. I want to feel comfortable in the hands of this creator, this writer, this author, who knows his world and perhaps loves it.
6. Last but not least, I want to come away feeling like a better person, uplifted, full of knowledge and insight and purpose. I want to feel good about being human.

Is that too much to ask? It may seem like a lot, but I don't think it is.

The great writers do this: Shakespeare, Faulkner, Melville, Tolstoi, Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges.

But alas, the vast majority of modern American writers seem to have no clue. Someone, I think it was a NY Times drama critic, said most of the plays you see on the stage today are junk.

The same thing is probably true of most art, most cinema, most novels, most poetry, almost any art form. It is certainly true of most published fiction, at least the stuff I see reviewed and recommended.

This long rant was prompted by a little one-paragraph blurb in Parade Magazine (9-25-11, Pg 7) recommending "A Trick of the Light" (nice title) by Louise Penny.

I went to Amazon and read the first few pages.
(Link:) http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_5_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=louise+penny+a+trick+of+the+light&sprefix=Louise+Pe

My God. It's not even clear. I was not transported, I was appalled. What a mess. This is a bestseller? Lord save us.

As Flannery O'Connor said, “There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

Do we live in age where junk is praised? Is that the best we can do? If so, that is very sad.

As Ezra Pound said, “In the end, the age was handed / the sort of shit that it demanded.”

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

TWO GALLERY SHOWS IN CULVER CITY

It's Saturday night in Los Angeles, and when I moved here in 1999 I wanted to become an old man about town. Most of the time I've just been an old man at home.

So I got dressed up tonight and went out to two gallery openings. I used to go to these things all the time to meet women. And to enjoy and art and to mingle and sometimes they have free food and drinks.

Tonight, first I went to Gallery 3209 in Culver City, CA, and saw some very sincere but to me unrealized paintings by a nice looking woman named CK Lyons. I didn't talk to her, but I liked looking at her more than I liked looking at her paintings.

There were only five or six people when I got there, so it was easy to see the show.

One painting did work for me: a dead matador apparently lying on a beach, with huge flowers in the background. Fairly strong work. The rest seemed somehow uncommitted, as if the artist was groping her way toward something. The show seemed to climax in the one painting I liked.

Here is a link: http://gallery3209.com/?page_id=99

Around the corner, I went to another reception at Corey Helford Gallery. I thought this work was appalling, although the show drew a big crowd.

About a hundred people milled around, hip looking, young. Free hot dogs from a catering truck outside. Two uniformed security guards, and two plain-clothes and very serious looking young men in black suits with those little curly wires going into their ears.

I don't know what they expected. Maybe they thought someone would try to steal this razzle-dazzle crap art. Take a look at this stuff for yourself:
http://www.coreyhelfordgallery.com/#/home/

These paintings are like going to the dentist. They make my teeth hurt.

People make the mistake of thinking that because something is slick and popular and has emotive images that it is good.

My god. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there.

Anyway, that was enough art for me. I boogied on home to have a cerveza Negro Modelo and relax.

It's hard to find good art, like it's hard to find good fiction or poetry. But sometimes the effort is better than sitting at home.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

STANLEY ELKIN - YARGH!

I just tried to read "STANLEY ELKIN'S GREATEST HITS."

Many years ago, I had a friend named Cunningham who was a big admirer of Elkin. I had the book in my "sell" pile for years. But I was looking for something to read, so I picked it up.

I thought the first long story, "The Making Of Ashenden," was wonderful until Page 39, when it turns to crap. Before that, it was bright, funny, clever, erudite, witty, wry, a rare form of humor. It makes fun of upper-class pretensions.

But then the main guy meets this legendary woman, with whom everyone "in Europe" is in love, and the story turns stunningly stupid. What is all this talk about picturing the coastlines? Who friggin’ cares?

Then she has some rare, fatal disease, and they carry on this unbelievably stupid conversation. God, the dialog is inane. And it is NOT funny.

Then he asks her to marry him. Huh? Say what? You have got to be kidding.

How stupid. I tried to read on, but it gets dumber and dumber. I waded on 5 or 6 more pages and finally gave up.

Now I know why I put this book in the “sell” pile.

I don't think I have ever seen such a pointless change in tone and style and direction and effect in a well-written story.

Yargh.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle

WILD HAIRY REBELLIOUS NOVEL

I just finished reading THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG, by Edward Abbey, a great, wild, hairy, rebellious novel.

The hero, George Hayduke, is all that, and more. He is also a tough guy, an ex-Green Beret, a Vietnam vet, and a great lover. A little crazy, in a good way.

But he is not a cliche. Don't expect one of those schlocky bestseller Jack Reacher types. The story is much better than that.

This novel has everything: great writing, strong plot, and good values.

Some of it sounds like Cormac McCarthy, the greatest living American novelist, in my humble opinion. The introduction says that Cormac McCarthy was a big fan of Abbey. I believe it.

The book has a driving, toe-tapping, page-turning, heart-pounding plot. Eco rebels burning down the house. Good people doing bad things in a good cause. And risking their lives to do it.

The other members of the Gang are well rounded. A sexy young woman who made my heart beat faster. A middle-aged doc with a heart of gold. A river guide whose heart is in the wilds. A good bunch. I admired them all.

You never know if they are going to triumph over the forces of evil, or if they are going to crash and burn and die. The forces of evil here are big mining companies that rape the earth, ruthless developers that strip the land, and government flunkies who kiss their asses for money.

It's a hell of a ride and a hell of a read. I recommend it highly.

You have to be the kind of person who loves the wilderness, loves to camp and hike and climb, and who wants to protect nature. I am all that, so I loved the book.

BTW, the Sierra Club looks like a bunch of lily-livered sellouts in this book. And I imagine there is truth in that.

Abbey writes well, especially about nature, violence and action. I didn't want to join the gang, but I sure liked reading about them.

Wow, what a book.

(Thanks to my buddy John in Colorado, who sent me a copy and urged me to read it.)

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle