Temporary

...It's understood that Hollywood sells Californication...Red Hot Chili Peppers

...Welcome to the mind of The Monarch!...Adult Swim Venture Brothers

One thing I notice about "How I Met Your Mom" wiki link which I watched a minute of last night was that the screenwriters are always describing actions instead of showing actions. Very unfilmic. "Til' Death" wiki link and "Two and a Half Men" wiki link do the same thing. It's really boring. Is one supposed to imagine how "Kelly insulted the guy at the frappucino place" or how "Brad used up all the hot water last Tuesday?" Why does one have to imagine how "Terry spilled coffee on a priest", how "Matty's teacher looks like Freddie Prinze", how "these pancakes taste like they were made by Kim Il Sung's mother-in-law" or how "the car sounds like it was fixed by James Earl Jones after a night of tequila shots and bodysurfing with Marlee Matlin?" Isn't this something the producers need to put on tv, so the audience understands what they are trying to say in the first place? How are we to understand the values of the show if the screenwriting is so "styptic"? One could at least put in a Newhartian phone call, or a Family Guy-style miniflashback, if it was so dang important to the plot!

Logically, it must not be important to the plot.

To be ridiculously sarcastically negative, in the manner of these shows, how about this: Perhaps I can describe a website I saw this morning instead of providing a link. Perhaps you need a paragraph of prose on the NOFX video instead of the YouTube link. Or maybe I will talk about Homer Simpson's hair, as the raison of the blog entry, without going through the trouble of uploading a picture. It's kind of like leaving typos in a blog entry on purpose because "the readers deserve to think harder about what it is that you're saying".

It gets to the point, where I am so (atypically) cynical, about screenwriters in this case, that I can surmise that they might be "saltpetering" the audience by making errors like this. It's an easy trick. It was common knowlege when I was young that the army put saltpeter in the cigarette rations so that personnel would spend more time fighting and less time screwing around. Letterman can't stop talking about this kind of thing; it's part of his show, a load-bearing element of his personality, Why not just add it to a prime time romantic comedy and post it to COST CENTER 201: "Sucking up to Dave"? Maybe the influential Los Angeles pornography lobby has decided to support a show that is so mildly irritating that it makes people want to take leave of their senses and take up residence in the wonderful world of Penthouse Forum. (Don't forget to do your physic$ homework! - ha ha.) If you want to compare it to something, maybe try "24: A day in the life of a spy, portrayed on a real-time hour by hour basis".

I really thought this description/enactment wrinkle was a well-known rule of screenplay writing! Feh. I think I'll write 5 pages about "How I Rented and Watched the Movie "Clue"." Let's all go watch a 1928 remake of a 1921 British murder mystery. Pre-Hitchcock!

When I get tired of competing with Siskel, Ebert, Roper et al I will remove this post. I don't feel like having some film dude who read my blog come up to me at a party someday and start talking to me about it. Considering that I've watched less than 5 minutes of these shows since they were put on the air, what do I care? And how about the advertising? I don't need a Corolla, but I think I need to test drive one. Sounds like a good Sunday afternoon waste of time for people who don't have the sense to put the game on.