The Spectrum of Possibilities
Rob Bricken, in his weekly Medium column Nerd Processor, talks about the upcoming final season of Game of Thrones, how it’s likely to disappoint, and why.
But the problem isn’t really with Daenerys, Tyrion, or all the other characters that may end up ruling Westeros or whether anyone rules Westeros or if it splits back into seven kingdoms or suddenly becomes a democracy or whatever. (Okay, that last one would be very crappy.) It’s that Game of Thrones is so popular and so epic and its ending so anticipated that every possible outcome, regardless of how good or bad it is, is inherently not as exciting as the spectrum of possibilities that precede it.That bit about the “spectrum of possibilities” is deliciously accurate. And it doesn’t just apply to how the Game of Thrones creators plan on ending the series. This problem is inherent in almost all of the upcoming genre television and movies.
How will Star Wars Episode IX wrap up the sequel trilogy? How can it be done without disappointing millions of fans?
How will the next Avengers movie wrap up the Infinity War story? How can they do it without millions of fans crying out in vain?
How will Westworld end? The Expanse? The Magicians? Mr. Robot? The list goes on.
How will the creators of The Big Bang Theory close out the series and will we ever learn Penny’s last name?
I’m not sure there are people wondering how Modern Family, Law and Order: SVU or Criminal Minds will end. Maybe I’m wrong. There’s definitely a fandom for This is Us that’s invested in the characters and timelines. The creators have done a fabulous job of teasing ideas and directions to keep viewers hooked and wondering where and how it will end. The “spectrum of possibilities” is the bread and butter of the show, along with the strong writing and character moments.
Of course, most of the time where characters go after the movie’s credits or show is off the air is in the realm of fan fiction or actual tie-in novels and comics. Want more seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? They exist in comic book form and written by the guy who created Buffy. What happened after the end of the last Star Trek: The Next Generation movie? Read the novels.
Still, a fandom’s expectation for a satisfying conclusion has got to be a huge headache for the creators. I assume some just don’t care about the reaction and just want to tell their story and damn the torpedoes regarding fans (see Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi). I think other creators may try and walk the line of fan service and servicing the story.
I’d bet JJ Abrams will walk that line with Episode IX. Maybe David Benioff and D. B. Weiss will do the same for Game of Thrones. We will know soon enough. Meanwhile, I’ll write my own versions in my head and try not to scream when the creators do their own thing.
Love is a Gift
Just about a week before Halloween, I saw the first holiday television ad. I’m sure it was selling me something. The deluge hasn’t really stopped. So, when I found this short Christmas film it was a nice respite from the rampant consumerism of the season.
Phil Beastall made an incredible film. It’s going to make you cry. And probably hug your mom.
Doing the Day
Michael Wade designs your To Do list:
“Urgent and Important” tasks? Easy choice. Those get tackled first.“Not Urgent But Important?” Spend as much as possible of your remaining time on these.
And if you decide to slip into the “Not Urgent and Not Important” or the “Urgent But Not Important” territory, carefully limit and record how much time you spend (waste?) on those.
Today is the First Day
CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin:
“Today is the first day I thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office.”I want to believe Republicans will reach that point. I really want to. I just can’t see it. Not yet.“When do Republicans start to turn on Trump? Because that’s the only thing that is going to get Trump out of office. It’s not going to be Democrats. And it’s certainly not now, but there may be a point where it’s too much.”
With Trump’s longtime personal lawyer (read: fixer) Michael Cohen pleading guilty to lying to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow negotiations we now can see how the conspiracy is taking shape. It has been obvious for a while that Trump is compromised somehow by Vladimir Putin and Russia. It isn’t going to be the infamous pee tape. It’s going to be money. That’s the motive. Trump and the Trump family saw a way to make money in Russia. The way to make money in Russia is through Putin and it explains why he’s been so congenial to Putin. The leverage that Putin and Russia has over Trump and his associates is going to come to light.
It ties in with Kushner wanting some sort of secret way to communicate with Russia that was found out early in the investigation. It ties in with the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. It ties to the possible coordination between Russia, Wikileaks/Julian Assange, and the Trump Campaign.
Maybe, just maybe, if this all comes to light in a comprehensive report that can be summed up in a headline/tagline/bumper sticker that Democrats hammer the media with… something like, “Trump is a Crook,” it might motivate the 30 or 40 or so Senators to come in a bipartisan fashion to ask Trump to resign or be impeached a la Nixon.
Honestly, I don’t see it happening. It’s far more likely Trump is the Republican nominee for President in 2020, loses, and then has to be forcibly removed in January 2021.
Watching this unfold in real time is maddeningly slow.
The Inimitable Creativity of Stephen Hillenburg
The story of Stephen Hillenburg by David Sims in The Atlantic is a wonderful look at a creator and his creation. I certainly watched my share of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes with my daughter to get the genius of its creator. Reading the profile/obituary, I learned a great deal more.
Star Wars MegaMix
Darren Tibbles‘ entry in the Star Wars Fan Awards is a tour de force of animation. His “showreel” is fast-paced and fun with all sorts of Star Wars bits thrown in.
With apologies to Marie Kondo, it is a rare piece of fan art that truly sparked joy in this jaded Star Wars fan.
Slow Down
Nicholas Bate on slowing down:
Slow down to the speed of thought. There is no such thing as hurry-up thinking.Especially good advice for me.You’ll just get a headache and get stressed.
Three Kinds of Corporate Mediocrity
Seth Godin does a deep dive into corporate culture and the scourge of mediocracy.
Uncaring mediocrity, in which employees have given up trying to make things better
Focused mediocrity, in which the organization is intentionally average
Accidental mediocrity, in which people don’t even realize that they’re not delivering excellence
There’s a lot more detail in his piece. It made me wonder where my company or department falls.
The Art of the Spectacle
Matt Ford in The New Republic writes of Donald Trump’s one skill―marketing himself and, in turn, defining himself in the context of a made-up reality. Trump is quite Orwellian in his truth are lies bit, but really, “obscuring truth with theater” is his bread and butter.
Trump, like many authoritarian figures, understands the value of spectacle. In some ways, this is the defining trait of the president’s life. Trump captured the presidency by casting himself as a successful businessman whose vast personal fortune would insulate him from Washington’s corruption. His career, however, displays no extraordinary business acumen or particular skill at dealmaking. An exhaustive New York Times investigation earlier this year found that Fred Trump, the president’s father, used his own wealth to keep his son afloat as Donald bounced from one failed venture to the next throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
What the president truly excels at is marketing himself. Even as his father kept open a spigot of cash to prop up his son’s enterprises, Donald Trump cultivated a public image of wealth, extravagance, and success. In recent years, his image became an asset of sorts that he burnished with a reality-TV show and leased to hotel properties owned by savvier entrepreneurs around the world. Trump University, his defunct business seminar program, was the ultimate expression of this strategy. While it promised to reveal Trump’s unique insights into real-estate investing, the program often amounted to a predatory scheme to extract tens of thousands of dollars from financially troubled “students.” In a way, they learned the secrets to his success better than most.
Don’t be distracted. Don’t be a rube.
Every Single Video Prince Ever Made
Recently, Prince’s estate released his whole video catalog in high resolution. With this incredible collection available, Prince super fan Anil Dash created a website embedding the entire list.
Now, the truth is, most of Prince’s videos just aren’t that great. Especially when considered in comparison to the sheer mind-boggling breadth of Prince’s genius, or the groundbreaking video innovation of his pop contemporaries like Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Madonna, the fact that Prince has fewer truly extraordinary music videos is a stark contrast. But as with all things Prince, when he was doing his best, there was absolutely nobody better.I’m not that big of a Prince fan to fall down this amazing rabbit hole, but your mileage may vary.Here, then, is a look at all of Prince’s music videos, in chronological order. Most of these writeups began as an ongoing Twitter thread that I’ve been updating as the estate released new videos (Questlove said it was worthy of his NYU class!) but here I’ve updated and expanded all the information on each video.
The Case for Beto O’Rourke
Dan Pfeiffer of Crooked Media advocates in an essay that failed Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke should be considered as a legitimate presidential candidate.
I’m not sure. It’s hard to say with any certainty who will run and who the American people might rally around. I do think he’s going to test the waters, though, and he might be charismatic enough to take out the field.
Why Illinois Gave Lovie Smith a Two-Year Extension
Matt Fortuna, writing at The Athletic, explains why a head coach who has gone 9-27 in three years is getting a contract extension.
It is foolish to think that a program of Illinois’ recent caliber can just hire and fire head coaches until landing on the right guy. The Illini are in this place to begin with because of the cumulative effect of misses, as Smith was hired after signing day in 2016 and became the program’s third head coach in as many seasons that fall. Two seasons later, he still fielded one of the youngest rosters in the country because of all the attrition that comes from those regime changes, and that youth reared its ugly head on the field.
Lovie Smith isn’t going anywhere. However, I sure hope the team next year hits six wins and goes to a bowl game.
The Consuming Fire
I finished John Scalzi’s latest novel, The Consuming Fire, and was in the process of writing a short little review when I see that Warren Ellis has done the same and pretty much nailed the review in a way I never could.
THE CONSUMING FIRE by John Scalzi sees John pretty much perfect his frictionless high-speed platinum-pulp science fiction storytelling. I read it in two sittings. John’s stripped his style down to what people are saying and what people are thinking, with the bare minimum of staging, and the thing flies along magnetic rails. If John was a straight crime writer, he’d have five hundred million in the bank and Lee Child would be bending the knee. If you want to study how commercial fiction writing works, take a look at this.This is, by far, my favorite new science fiction thing. It’s going to make a fantastic television show.This is the second in his Interdependency sequence, and if you’re missing Game Of Thrones or The Expanse, this is both. Also, if you ever liked the Mission Impossible or Leverage tv series, you will fucking love this. It’s court intrigue, spaceships, and a lovely long con.
The Simple Joy of “No Phones Allowed”
David Cain at Rapitude wrote a thousand words about his experience at a concert that was set up as a “No Phones” experience.
Our phones drain the life out of a room. They give everyone a push-button way to completely disengage their mind from their surroundings, while their body remains in the room, only minimally aware of itself. Essentially, we all have a risk-free ripcord we can pull at the first pang of boredom or desire for novelty, and of course those pangs occur constantly.
He also peeks into the future and sees this idea:
I imagine that in another decade or two we’ll look at 2010s-era device use something like we do now with cigarette smoking. I was born in 1980, and I remember smoking sections on planes, which is unthinkable today. I wonder if today’s kids will one day vaguely remember the brief, bizarre time when people didn’t think twice about lighting up a screen in the middle of a darkened concert hall.
I think he has a real point. It’s hard to look back and not see how my grandkids will view our interconnected, always-on boredom-eliminating activities.
The Alternative to Thinking All the Time
I overthink everything. This is a known problem for me. Sometimes I can’t enjoy an experience because I’m thinking about it too much. Or I’m thinking ahead to other experiences and not focused on what’s happening right this second. Chris Bowler in his email newsletter, The Weekly Review, expressed an item of note that spoke directly to my own experiences.
David Cain, writing at Raptitude, wrote about not thinking all the time:
One evening last week, I was sitting on my front stoop waiting for a friend to come over. I brought a book out with me, but instead of reading I just sat there and let my senses take in the scene.I don’t think I’ve done anything like this in years. It’s a focus thing for me. Cain ends the pieces with this call to action:I didn’t look or listen for anything in particular, I just let the details of this particular moment in the neighborhood come to me: the quality of the air—heavy and warm, the incoming summer storm kind; birds; two couples having a conversation down the sidewalk; the clinking of dishes coming from inside the house to my right; distant hammering from a construction site somewhere in the blocks behind my house.
Life can disappear on us just like a cup of coffee consumed on autopilot. In other words, to really experience life itself, as opposed to just more thinking about life, we need to remember we’re having an experience.I get this. I really should try to remember to experience life itself. Maybe that’s a good goal for 2019.
Deceptive Practices
Ricky Jay passed away.
I’m not sure when I first started to recognize him. It might have been Deadwood or Mystery Men. I had forgotten he was in Boogie Nights and that’s probably where a lot of people would know him from.
As a magician, he was one of the best up-close card trick guys I’d ever seen. Just watch him do his thing with the four queens.
Everyone is linking to The New Yorker profile, especially for the opening. It begins like this…
The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened:The 2012 documentary film about Jay, Deceptive Practices, is streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video. I’ve never seen it. Perhaps I should.Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card.
“Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.
He turned over the three of clubs.
Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.”
After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.”
Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.”
Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right-what was the card?”
“Two of spades.”
Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.
The deuce of spades.
A small riot ensued.
Share Your Gifts
Apple has made a sweet holiday commercial this season. It looks like a Pixar short and, I think, captures what many creative do all day, every day.
It’s just beautiful with minimum product placement. Brilliant.
Grinch Burns
Drew Magary, writing for The Concourse, has come up with the official ranking of Grinch burns. His top two are spot on.
1. Your soul is an appalling dump heap, overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled-up knots.Read the rest.2. You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile. (2a. Given the choice between the two of you, I’d take the seasick crocodile.)