mwproductions

If so, it's propagating. I live in the NW USA and have been noticing it for years.

I watched the last few episodes of Tales From the Loop. It was a pretty interesting show that I completely missed when it came out. I'm glad someone told me about it.

For movies, I finished up Dil To Pagal Hai, which I started last week. I'm working my way through all of SRK's films.

I watched Green Card, which was fine, if entirely predictable. I also don't get why people find Gérard Depardieu attractive.

Evil Under the Sun was good, because I always enjoy Poirot.

I watched Dark Star because it was an early John Carpenter film. It was not good.

I watched Stalag Luft mostly because it starred Stephen Fry. I liked it! Classic British humor.

Killer Heat was an interesting modern take on noir.

Sirocco from 1951 barely held my attention. It felt like a Casablanca wannabe. Maybe I'm not giving it a fair shake. Feel free to make a case for it.

I also watched Tokyo Joe, which I liked slightly more, but again, it felt like the studio was just thinking, "we have Humphrey Bogart, what should we do with him?" And then just slapped together another vaguely Casablanca-esque film and plopped him into it.

I had no idea what to expect from Lost in Yonkers. It was... Fine.

Somehow I had never seen When the Wind Blows before. Fantastic animation style, and I really like the blending of live action footage with traditional animation. That ending though. Fuck me.

Lost, but not the one you're thinking of.

Travel back in time with me to September 4, 2001. It was a golden age, and reality television had taken off in a big way. NBC and CBS were each set to premiere a new show, with basically the same format: Teams of two Americans would start somewhere in the world and have to race back to the United States to win a cash prize.

NBC's show Lost was the first to air, with CBS's The Amazing Race airing the night after. The premise of Lost was great:

Three two-member teams knew only the final destination (thousands of miles away) and were given only a backpack full of clothes and other essentials. In addition, team members were not acquainted with one another prior to the show, and were assigned to teams. Contestants were blindfolded and dropped off with a single camera person in a remote location of an unknown country to find their way back to their home country...Teams were given no money until they managed to figure out what country they were in. During the first set, the teams were abandoned in Mongolia. (Source: Wikipedia)

The show did not do well. NBC blamed the low ratings on the fact that 9/11 happened shortly after, which actually preempted the second episode. Considering The Amazing Race debuted at basically the same time and went on to tremendous success (Lost had 1 season with 6 episodes, whereas The Amazing Race had 36 seasons and 418 episodes), I suspect something else was the cause.

So if the show was so bad, why did I like it?

First, I liked the idea that the teams started out in a location that was a mystery to them. Their first challenge was to figure out where in the world they were in a country where they (almost certainly) didn't speak the language.

Second, although they were two-person teams, any passage they secured for themselves, they also had to secure for their camera person. You want to catch a flight? Well, I hope you have enough money to buy three tickets!

And finally, I was hooked early on when this one moment happened. It's still one of my favorite moments of reality TV. Remember, all three teams started out in the Mongolian desert. They were spread out from one another, so no two teams would cross paths right away. This meant that as they made their way to the nearest village, they were headed to different villages.

Two teams had a similar plan: To catch a bus that drove between the villages (and, IIRC, was headed to a larger city). So the first team gets on the bus in their village, and as the bus drives into the village where the second team is waiting, the first team spots them. They then quickly convince the bus driver not to stop and to just keep on driving instead. We're then shown two shots: One from inside the bus, where we see the second team and their camera guy as they watch the bus go by, and then one from outside the bus, as the second team watches the bus blow past them and they realize the first team is on board.

Or Wonderfalls, or Pushing Daisies, or basically anything Bryan Fuller does.

It drives me nuts that people frequently leave out the words "to be" when talking. For example, they will say something like, "the car needs washed." No, either the car needs to be washed, or it needs washing.

I do something a bit like this. I'll pick a theme (animals, food, places, etc) and then go through the alphabet one letter at a time and something from the theme that starts with that letter. Alternatively, I'll pick a letter and just think of as many different words as I can that start with that letter. Those work for me most of the time!

Just one on each end.

Develop my current podcast further, as well as work on at least 1 or 2 other podcast ideas I have. So many great ideas, so little time.

"Because we can."

For now.

Manul

This list makes me wish I were still a DJ at my community radio station. I love the idea of doing an entire hour that's just different covers of this song with no explanation.