somniloquence

Today I started my very first real honest to gosh freelance job. It means I won't get my unemployment moolah for the week, of course, but I'm much more interested in getting clients and word of mouth. It's not much, just a proofing job, but it's for a coffee-table style niche magazine for guitar geeks published here. I'm about halfway through, just finished the longest article, and it's really a gorgeous book. I looked at a newsstand copy a while ago and was very impressed with what they did, but most important for my music-geek soul, I'm reading about all these guitar legends and the behind the scenes things like building specialist guitars and other fretted instruments, and one of the articles in this issue is on Les Paul. I mean, my first lil' "I'm trying a new career path" job involves reading about Les freakin' Paul!

I've established a domain and email account for business, and am writing blurbs for the various groups I belong to so I can get listed in all the freelance places. I need to prepare copy for a web site and really get the resume in good online order, but overall, with my "do a thing a day" plan, it's going okay. Hopefully I can get some momentum going, though getting ready for spring quarter class will kind of throw a spanner in those works.

Blues and Olive still can't get along. Every time I think there will be a thaw, and Olive starts to lick him (she's a licking kitty), he smacks her, the little doofus. And the rest of the time, he's trying to get her to pay attention to him, so she's smacking, hissing, snarling, and growling at him. I just. Cats. But it's so fun to watch him racing around the backyard like a maniac. He's such a dork, and still growing into his feet. He's utterly fascinated, too, by the computer, and I took some pics of him while I was vidding that I'll try to put up.

Speaking of vidding, my Keen Eddie vid for Pacificon is going well. I like it so far, even though it really doesn't have any sensible storyline or anything. It's just one big goof, a collection of clips that are just silly examples of the perfection of the Monty/Eddie relationship.

And I have been avoiding talking about The Wire's final season, because in some ways it was letting me down, and also, I have been so far behind everyone else that I felt foolish talking about it. I'm only up to 8, and everyone's talking about 9, but I have read most of the spoilers so I have an idea of what's going on.

( A season of ups and downs )

ZOMG, you guys! strangefandom Stranger in a Strange Fandom (a community where people watch certain vids of fandoms they don't know, and then post their synposes of what they think the fandom is about based on the vids), has posted their latest round of strange fandoms, and two vids I worked on are included. And they are so fun and interesting to read!!

They used I Remember, the Charlie Jade vid feochadn and I made, and keiko_kirin's wild Lack, for the Charlie Jade signup, and they also had one for Keen Eddie, with my Too Bad, one of the funnest vids I ever made. The vids are linked at the communities above, and it probably helps to watch the vids if you haven't seen them, just to understand what the strangers who write the synopses are looking at. Some of them are just so funny. There were ten (!!!) strangers synposizing the vids for Charlie Jade, and OMG, I had tears in my eyes from laughing. It's amazing what people come up with -- watermelon drinks! drains in the ocean! yay! Really, I just could not be happier, and I can't wait to see who wrote them.

And the Keen Eddie ones are great at picking up the tone of the series (although, sniff, someone called Monty Fugly Guy, which hurts my Monty-lovin' heart -- see icon), and I can't believe eight people were willing to write the synopses.

This really came at a good time -- I've got a cold, I'm depressed (it's November, I hate it now), I'm lonesome without my sister, and I needed such a pick me up. You Stranger mods, you are my heroes. Thank you so much for allowing me to participate.

And the rest of you, go read! Fun! There are a bunch of other fandoms, too, and I can't wait to read the rest of the synposes.

Getting all 13 episodes of Keen Eddie on nice shiny DVDs is a little like those classic choice scenarios where you really have no choice. You can have the episodes on disc, preserved in beautiful picture forever (or at least until new technology becomes standard and/or laser rot proves to be more than an urban myth), but you have to accept them without the original music in many of the best scenes, and you have to watch them all out of order. So, cake or death? Which will it be? Of course any true fan chooses to have them even without the music. But for anyone who's already fallen in love with the show, it becomes painful to watch some of the episodes. And it's impossible to review the discs without focusing on this.

( Review of Keen Eddie Complete Series DVDs )

ETA: I believe this is the original order of the episodes as they were conceived:
Pilot
Horse Heir
Keeping Up Appearances
Citzen Cecil
Who Wants to Be in a Club That Would Have Me As a Member?
Sucker Punch
Black Like Me
Inciting Incident
Achtung, Baby
The Amazing Larry Dunn
Sticky Fingers
Eddie Loves Baseball
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite

No time, no time, aiiieeee... but I did squeeze in time to say this on an email list I belong to, and want to encourage folks here, as well. If you're one of my fellow Keen Eddie fans who tuned in to Bravo last night for the pilot, you might have noticed that they didn't clutter it up with pop up ads and banners -- almost unheard of for cable these days. And if you'd seen the original, you'd also have noted they didn't cut a moment out of the original show, also unheard of on a cable pickup.

So, thank Bravo -- mostly, we only write to people when we're pissed. Having served as an editor at some magazines and newspapers, I know from experience you will almost never hear an attagirl for a good issue, but you will always hear hate and a "you suck" for something someone didn't like. If you can spare a few moments, thank Bravo for picking up the show, and airing it uncut, and especially for the no popup ads. For a vidder, this is a godsend (I wish I could have had such clean copies when I made my vid earlier last year), and I really believe Bravo should be thanked for giving such attention to this show. Their contact page on their web site is here: http://www.bravotv.com/Contact_Us/

I'm working on this vid that's turning out to be way... well, way everything from what I thought it would be. I knew it would be hard and that I would be using a lot of super fast cuts, which I haven't done much of yet in my nascent computer vidding experience. I knew it would need to be funny, and so would tax my ability to be funny, which I've always thought was pretty shaky anyway, and I knew it would also have to be accessible because it's for a show few people saw, and uses a film style that many people don't like. And it's had me thinking a lot about comedy vids, and why I rarely ever make them.

Comedy vids are, more than any other vids, probably the hardest to sell to an audience even while they're more popular with audiences -- comedy is even more subjective than any other style, so whatever you're presenting, you have to know that someone, somewhere won't like it. So the process of presenting it for viewing is going to mean you'll get skewed responses, even moreso than for any other vid (which are always going to engender different reactions, anyway, as all art does). And when you're working in a vacuum, by yourself, sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, you (meaning me) have to constantly second-guess yourself about what's funny, because after a while, you've looked at the "funny" clips so often that you can't always be sure you're assessing things correctly.

At this point, I'm starting to lose my sense of what's going to be funny to anyone else but me, and I'm also wondering about what's funny to me. A clip I thought was hysterical in the show, and when I first was putting it into the vid has, by now, after spending nearly an hour trying to edit it so that it fit, hit the punchline right, and made any kind of sense at all, has become highly non-funny to me now. I think that a beta who shares your sense of humor has to be the most vital part of making a comedy vid, unless you're lucky enough to have a vidding partner -- partnering or working in a group makes comedy easier, I think.

The only two comedy vids I've made without being part of a group were both very different, stylistically, than this Keen Eddie vid. And one I'd argue might not even be comedy; it was more of a follow-the-actor vid for David Duchovny juxtaposing Mulder's girlishness with DD's role as Denise on Twin Peaks, and a few other things. The other comedy vid I've made, an X-Files one, seems to either make people laugh or feel pain because it's kind of tragically funny for Mulder. Both vids I made with sherrold, and I think the process overall was easier because you're having a regular dialog with someone, bouncing ideas off them. If they share your humor, then it's a cakewalk.

I remember reading an article interviewing a famous comedian, and I can't remember who it was, but he/she was saying that the writing process can be difficult because at first, you're writing by yourself usually, putting down the ideas that you think are funny. As you refine it, you start second guessing yourself. And I remember Eddie Izzard once saying about how he crafts the bare bones of his "routines," which change so dramatically with each audience, and a lot of his humor is based on how audiences are reacting, what kind of feeling he has about them on a given night.

Vidders, obviously, can't do that. The best you can do is show it to an audience "unfinished" at a con, which many of us would be reluctant to do, or get a beta whose opinion you trust. So you have to, even more than any other type of vidding process, rely mostly on yourself and your sense of what's funny or what's not, and funny can wear thin more than most genres. I remember last year getting myself into a lot of trouble by commenting on how I didn't find any of the "funny" vids on the Vividcon premier tape to be all that funny -- nor did the friend I watched it with. Those vids that didn't work for me on tape, though, might have had more positive responses from the audience because it's often easier to get caught up in others' laughter around you. Sometimes, things just work better in a large group. Some of the vids people thought were clever and hilarious I found unbelievably agonizing to watch. And I've noticed that in the past few years, I've kind of gravitated towards humor that's quiet and subtle and character-based, which means context is going to be really, really important -- and if I don't have that context, then I could be in trouble as a viewer.

I love a good gag vid, a type that seems to be increasingly popular -- the kind of one-off type vids that have a powerful joke at their core, that anyone can laugh at, but for me, they rarely have staying power. Once I've laughed, I'm done; there's no burning desire to rewatch. Vids like these -- such as the Smallville Green Acres theme, or the Stargate alien love vid to Something to Talk About -- work more in their immediacy than in a long-term rewatching feeling, at least for me. I like 'em, but I don't find myself drawn to them much or to making them.

Timing is everything in a comedy vid, just as in stand-up. You not only have to have good editing skills, but you have to know how to hit the punchline and make the song work for the humor. If it's a gag, you have to know when to get in and when to get out. One of the reasons a vid such as sisabet's Cowboy works so well for me is that there's more to it than just the joke of Angel as pimp -- underneath the obvious humor there's a nice little joke about Angel's power over other people in his life, how he kind of directs others and influences their lives in a rather pimptastic way. The timing is exquisite, and everything hits his character issues with acuity. So there's a built-in rewatchability beyond the clear surface jokes that I enjoyed (and of course, I could be talking out my ass about it and in no way did she mean anything besides the obvious with the vid, and she'd think I was insane for saying this!). It all coalesces in a way that makes it, perhaps not knee-slappingly funny, but that kind of layered humor that plays well on further viewings.

It was interesting finally getting a chance to see that Mulder comedy vid, Nobody Takes Me Seriously, with an audience. I'd never had the chance to hear reactions to it beyond my Media Cannibals group who put out the tape it was on; and I've had little feedback (pretty much: one person found it hilarious, the other found it kind of sad because it was so tragically true). I was sitting in the front at the comedy show, and I heard one laugh at one point in the vid. So clearly it isn't a laugh out loud vid, which is okay, because I'm not sure I'm a laugh out loud person, anyway. If you asked me, I'd say no one found it funny, but sometimes outright laughter isn't the best way to judge, which makes it much harder to know if you've done your job. I love to be made to laugh loudly, but I'm not sure I'm capable of doing it-- I never "see" those gag vids that have become so popular, they just wouldn't occur to me as ideas for vids to make, so clearly my humor forte is going to be somewhere else.

Which is what keeps bugging me about this Eddie vid. It made feochadn sputter loudly, and my other friend who watched it said it was very funny, but after all this time spent on it, trying to force myself to cut brutally short and wondering if I got enough in to make the punchline, and just rewatching each clip over and over, I'm not sure I can even figure out where my humor is. It's sort of strange, when you think about it -- here we are, hunched over a computer, cutting and trimming and trying to create punchline after punchline, keep something funny throughout its timeline, and we're doing it all alone, rewatching clips until they've long since lost their effect in our eyes. And then guessing and hoping that what we thought was funny initially will remain funny once the vid is done.

Sometimes I watch my progress and laugh like a drain. Others, I just shake my head and say, well, this is sure demented. A few times I've thought, this is going to tank. Since I'm making this to show at a con, the audience is definitely a factor -- while it's important to make a vid we like and that satisfies ourselves, when you plan to show others, you do have to at least think about how audiences view things and how your humor may or may not fit in with others who will see your vid. It's definitely reminding me why I so rarely do comedy, and why drama and angst make more sense to me, are easier for me to identify with creatively. I love a good comedy, but it really is true -- creating comedy is far, far more difficult than creating good drama.

Review of Keen Eddie, pilot episode

There used to be great summer replacement shows that you could count on to get you through the dog days, when nothing else was on. It seems like more and more it’s reality TV, which I loathe with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns, and I fondly remember the days when such series as Northern Exposure and Seinfeld (when it was good) and a few others showed up and even survived. Last year we got the delightful Monk (coming back soon), and there was a kind of spring/summer hybrid series before that called the American Embassy that I really enjoyed, but which Fox did not stick with. A favorite a few years ago was the peculiar and wonderful G vs. E, which later went to Sci-Fi and was called Good vs. Evil (who can resist the delicious Richard Brooks with a full ‘70s ‘fro?).

Fewer and fewer good drama or comedy series seem to be getting that summer treatment, though. EW used to devote a whole section to summer shows, which I notice I haven’t seen yet, so I wonder if they’ve abandoned the concept since it’s all reality, all the time. Which is why I tuned in eagerly to Keen Eddie last night on Fox, even though I’d heard somewhat negative things about it. It’s about a NYC detective named Eddie Arlette who screws up a major drug bust with some English characters, and so they send him to England as punishment and to finish the job. He’s abrasive, stupid, annoying, and often funny as of course all American cops have to be (I’m suddenly in mind of that horrid show set in Britain with the American guy cop and the blonde chick cop... what the hell was that called? It had a short life in syndication over a decade ago). Naturally I had to watch it since it was set in London (I don’t get BBC America so my quotient of Brit TV is far lower than I would prefer, and PBS these days seems to only show crap like inspirational programming), and was rewarded with a number of my favorite second-tier character actors making appearances, a funny script, and some really nice cinemtography that while not original, was put together in a lively, engaging style.

Despite knowing better, I really enjoyed this pilot. It was derivative in the extreme, shot in a total Guy Ritchie circa Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels style — all fast-zoom, flash-cut, slo-mo, camera-whip style. It used the flashing, micro-edited interstitials that Angel uses. It had dialog straight of a Ritchie movie too, just without the swearing, but keeping the peculiar, hilarious criminals. Every cop show cliché, and every fish out of water, ugly American cliché as well, not to mention the love-hate sexual tension between him and his reluctant flatmate, another icy blonde chick. But the thing is, it still made me laugh out loud a number of times, and despite the embarrassment factor (Eddie really is often stupid beyond words, and arrogantly so, which makes me cringe in horror), I enjoyed him as a character (he has the most startlingly green eyes I think I’ve ever seen, they border on freaky). His dog Pete is funny as well, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s an English bull terrier, my favorite kind, even down to how they get him out of the lengthy British quarantine. All the secondary characters are either hilarious themselves, or great straight men for the funny stuff.

When he set his matchbook map of Manhattan on fire in the opening set, I burst out laughing, and that really felt good considering how down in the dumps I’ve been over Buffy being gone. The characters have a nice flavor — one scene has Eddie being hung from a meat hook in a van, having a lengthy discussion with a crime boss who clearly can’t find good help, and it’s just a great little set piece where you get to know the crime boss just from his exasperated reactions and the way he and Eddie chat like it’s another day at the office. Eddie’s “partner” is truly one of the most peculiar and freakish people I’ve ever seen presented on an American show, which was was simply sublime and wonderfully risky From the moment he takes Eddie to a swinger’s club and starts dancing in his black leather underpants, you know you’re in for one seriously deranged guy, although a guy who happens to look like a woman in drag and who is also a protector of small animals, not to mention a really savvy cop. I think I’m going to like DI Monty Pippin a lot. Their “boss” is one of my favorite character actors over there, Colin Salmon, and it’s so lovely to see him in a role with some authority. I loved it when Eddie asked Pippin if the guv was gay, and Pippin responded with “He’s just going places.” I have no idea what would motivate an exchange like that, but it made me laugh at its delightful non-sequiturishness.

Sometimes I get a little weary of Americans always being stupid about Brit culture, and one would think that if Eddie’s superiors were sending him over to clean up his mess, they might have at least given him a guide book and a backgrounder on how the English police system works, but that’s a fairly minor quibble overall. Not all the dialog sparkles and not all the set-ups work, but overall, it gives me something to look forward to on Tuesday nights. There will be the usual huge-lipped babes like last night’s, where their lips arrive in the room before the rest of their bodies; and probably more straight-outta Ritchie film tricks showing up, but if they keep up the teasing tone and the mix of drama and humor, and allow Eddie to learn a few things now and then (not to mention the British cops learn from him), it should be worth 13 weeks of my summer (plus, I think it’s going to be a very viddable show). If only Fox will show all 13 eps — judging by their lack of support for... well, anything not reality or 24, and the way they treated the American Embassy, I’m not sure we’ll get to see them all. Tune in while you can.