Reckless Rites

This is a book review published today in the Jerusalem Post. With a picture of the book cover here.

That said, I'm going to try to start making this blog more about posting actual messages and words and less about putting up some of the random things that I publish. No, no I won't. I'm not really sure what I'll do.

I saw Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip's premier last night - it was pretty good. I don't think it's going to succeed - which is sad - it's sort of ridiculous that I'm getting sad that something won't succeed when it hasn't even failed yet - in fact, I don't think it's even premeired yet.

But I digress. For some reason (strangely, I think that the gods of NBC believe that you watch the premier for free, without ads, on tvguide.com, you'll watch it again, with ads, on Monday night at 10), as you can probably figure out by that aside, nbc put up the entire pilot on tvguide.com. You should check it out. Bradley Whitford (sp?) and Matthew Perry are great together - I think Sorkin realized this from the couple of episodes he had Perry do on the West Wing - which weren't great, but where the interaction between Whitford and Perry's characters was pretty strong. And having Danny Cancanan back (who the hell cares what his none West Wing name is - for me he'll always be Danny) - and playing a very Dany Cancanan like character (I'll let you see it for yourself) is always a pleasure.

I also love the self-referentiality of it all. The writer and director (both Sorkin, clearly) who both have bad drug habits they can't kick but are clearly the best in the business. Clearly. I use that word too much. The evil studio who needs Sorkin - oh, I'm sorry, who needs the main characters - but hates them just as much. It was genius, also, that Sorkin got in a huge and intense rant about the awfulness of television and could just blame it on a departing character. The show is great. I give it five episodes.

It was also great that while this was clearly meant to be NBC (Studio Sixty = SNL) someone up there who thinks all Americans are as idiotic as him or herself made sure to have a reference to another station named NBC - which the new President of this station - NBS (no similarities there) - was poached from. Wow, now I realize that this can't be NBC! What kind of idiots do they think we are?

And the greatest thing about it is, Sorkin - who probably wrote those lines, with NBC's approval in mind, knows we're not idiots. (And by we I mean the American public). He knows we're going to get it. But he also knows the higher ups at NBC won't think we will. I've missed you, Aaron.