Innocent Bystander

Memorial Day memories...

Somewhere along the line, Memorial Day became both a Monday holiday and the official start of summer.

As a kid growing up in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, Memorial Day was also known as May 30th and the summer thing didn't happen until that exact moment when the bell rang and we were released from school for the year, running like madmen and idiots headlong into long, hot days off, no doubt driving our parents crazy. But Memorial Day--whichever day of the week May 30th fell upon--meant a day off from school, a parade, and a trip to my Uncle Louie's house out in the country for an undoubtedly contentious picnic. Uncle Louie was like that.

That parade was the bane of my existence. I remember it as one long-ass low-level spectacle. I hated parades, even those with some kind of patriotic theme. My parents dragged me along to sit sullenly on a curb and watch the marching bands, local dignitaries, police cars and fire engines march and drive slowly up Broad Street, making their way to Odd Fellows Cemetery for a memorial service. (I think we even went to that a few times.) Then it was home and into the car to Uncle Louie's house.

Very little of a memorial nature was ever mentioned. We didn't pause to honor fallen comrades and any remembrance of the dead was confined to the placing of (plastic) flowers on a grave. My mom was more concerned about the potato salad being in the sun. And don't even bring out a metal spoon to put in it. That way lies madness.

We'd play wiffle ball, call my Uncle John "Uncle Bulgey" until our respective moms told us to stop, and end up going for a walk, usually in the field across from Louie's house, just to get away. By dusk everyone was tired of everyone else--that's how families are--and we'd pack up and make the short ride home, hopefully in time to sit out on the front porch. But school usually loomed the next day and the countdown began to the last day and the real start of summer, at least for us kids.

My hometown, Tamaqua, still has a Memorial Day parade. I will not be attending this year, mainly because I live 3,000 miles away but also because I've seen enough marching bands, fire engines and local dignitaries to last a lifetime.

Summer is here...and so are summer movies!

Memorial Day weekend officially marks the beginning of summer. And with that sunny and hot season comes the biggest movie releases of the year. It starts earlier and earlier each year. Iron Man 2 back on May 7 marked the beginning of the summer movie season, but there's still a lot to come out. Let's look at some of them, shall we?

Sex in the City 2—The girls go to the Middle East. They all get captured and beheaded. In other words, a happy ending

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time—I refuse to go see any action/adventure movie where the hero looks like he stepped out of a Margaret Keane painting.

Killers—Is there anything more repulsive than a movie starring Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher as a couple who meets cute only to find out one of them is a secret agent?

Knight and Day—Oh, yeah...much more repulsive is the SAME movie starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. And Vanilla Sky was such a huge hit, we've been dying for them to make another movie together.

Marmaduke—Do you think Owen Wilson's suicide attempt can be directly linked to the moment he realized he was king of the dog movies?

Get Him to the Greek—Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, and P. Diddy in a continuation of Brand's character from the god-awful Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Proof positive there is a movie theater in Hell.

Karate Kid—Will Smith has mastered cloning. And it pays to have your parents as producers when you get top-billing over Jackie Chan in your first starring role.

The A-Team—Absolute mindless action, no doubt. I'm so there for this one even though it co-stars the immensely forgettable and bland Bradley Cooper.

Toy Story 3—Pixar. Untouchable.

Grown Ups—Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, and Rob Schneider pee in a swimming pool. That movie theater in Hell is most certainly a multiplex.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse—They all die in the end. Hopefully.

Predators—Adrien Brody is NOT an action hero. We learned this from King Kong, so stop it.

Salt—Angelina Jolie shoots things. It's so much better than when Angelina Jolie acts.

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore—It's always surprising when a studio releases such an obvious "Oscar bait" movie in the summer. Usually they reserve such high-class films for December.

Have fun at the movies this summer!

San Diego TV News news...Neville and Levin throw in the towel...

I almost never write about San Diego TV News anymore because let's face it...there's not a lot to write about. For a big city, all local news stations here seem to be covering a small town. Fires, murders, traffic accidents. I'm sure it's this way around the country, in even bigger cities. That's why they call it local news.

But San Diego saw two major on-air news personalities leave the air this past week. Arthel Neville left the Fox 5 Morning News and Marty Levin retired from NBC 7/39.

Neville was the outside big name added to a roster of locally known talent (Chrissy Russo, Susan Lennon, and Kathleen Bade, since augmented by Aloha Taylor and Loren Nancarrow) when Fox 5 started up 2 years ago. The daughter of Art Neville, of the musical Neville Brothers, she came from E!, CNN, and co-hosted Fox's Good Day Live before landing in San Diego. While a good sport each morning, Arthel seemed a little too classy for a morning TV news show in San Diego and no one can ever blame anyone from walking away from a job that includes being in at 4:30 each morning. I can't find anything on this here Internet thingie that says where Arthel is heading next. I'm guessing the station's live reporter, Shally Zomorodi, will be taking Arthel's seat at the anchor desk.

Marty Levin has been a fixture on San Diego local TV for 33 years. His career includes all 3 of the major network-affiliated stations. I don't watch 7/39 very much, but they seem to have the local record for keeping talent on the air. There's not a lot of change there, which is a major comfort for viewers. I've always looked at on-air talent as the main face of local TV news, much more important than the news director, producers, and graphics package. It's also refreshing to see a person retire from the TV news biz because he felt it was time to go. The worst thing in the world is a news anchor hanging on until they literally die in the job (like Hal Fishman at KTLA), long past the age when they should have hung it up and gone fishin'. Levin reportedly gave away most of his ties to co-workers. That's a sure sign he has no illusions about retirement. I envy him.

Friday Foto #131...

Colorful. On Mission St. in San Francisco. To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

More LOST...and boo, hiss KGTV in San Diego...

Imagine my surprise on Monday when one of my co-workers came in and told me how disappointed he was in the LOST finale since they all ended up dead. And I was like, "WTF DOES THAT MEAN?"

And then I arrived late for a meeting where two other co-workers were discussing the final church scene and the opening of the door to heaven by Jack's father (Christian Shepherd...get it?) and how they were all dead.

And once again, I was all "WTF DOES THAT MEAN?"

Symbolism is lost on me, folks, and yes...I fully recognize the pun embedded in that statement. My take on LOST was that they were all given a second chance in the Sideways dimension to start their lives anew, that they had all found each other, and in doing so found the missing element in their lives that allowed them to move on. I never even considered for a second that they were all meeting in Heaven's waiting room to make the big move into their new celestial digs.

I still like my version better, but if I had actually seen the final shot for the show I would have felt differently. It seems like the final image showed that familiar sandy beach with the waves and oh, yeah...a crashed plane. Many people made a leap of no faith here and took that to mean they were all dead when the plane originally crashed. But according to Mike Bruno on EW.com, the LOST producers knew nothing about that scene being added: "Turns out ABC just threw those final scenes in there as a 'visual aid,' and they didn’t actually have anything to do with the show’s plot. The network – and not executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse — added those shots of the beach simply to soften the transition from the emotional ending of the series finale to the 11p.m. news and didn’t realize that viewers who had been obsessing over every detail of every scene of every episode might have considered the series’ final images as having some meaning."

WHAT?! Has the network been living in a cave the last six years? This show has been more minutely dissected than any in television history, and they were unaware that adding a scene like this would cause any discussion?

But it was all a moot point here in San Diego where the local ABC affiliate, KGTV Channel 10, just clipped off that scene to get right to the news. Because, you know, so many people were just waiting up for a lousy 10-minute newscast, waiting through 4 and 1/2 hours of LOST (including the 2-hour special from 7:00-9:00pm) just to see a news show that rehashed crap from an earlier broadcast. So KGTV, here's another reason why I don't watch you on a regular basis. Let's add disrespect for the viewers to the list that includes instantly forgettable on-air news talent, annoying promos, and a network that has nothing worth watching beyond LOST.

The KA-CHUNK Report: 24 ends with a whimper, not a bang...

After 8 seasons--or days, depending on your devotion to the 24 measure of time--24 is no more, at least on the small screen. Jack Bauer left television with a decided whimper last night, in an unsatisfying finale to what was, at times, the best action/adventure show to ever grace the broadcast waves.

My ultimate "dream" ending (chronicled here) didn't happen, and I'm very happy to say that. The writers and producers at least had the guts to stick their guns (pun intended) and carry through what was the second worst (but not by much) season of the show, "outshined" only by the horrible season 6.

With this final story arc, the show's staff pretty much decimated any audience feeling for Jack Bauer, who became a living, breathing terminator in the final episodes, stopped only by Chloe O'Brian. There was one touching moment at the end involving the two of them, but otherwise this 2-hour finale had Jack skulking around like an erstwhile Lee Harvey Oswald, albeit attempting to assassinate a very bad president. It was a minor slap in the face to the legion of devoted fans who hung on every episode of every season, good and bad, only to be "rewarded" with a wimpish ending.

I'm sorry to see Jack go, but it was time. It's unfortunate that they ended season 7 with a cliffhanger, one that was all but ignored with the start of this final season. Last year's story arc featuring homegrown right-wing terrorists--plus the introduction of FBI agent Renee Walker and the return of Tony Almeida--was a great one, and it would have been the perfect one to go out on. But it wasn't to be.

24 ended like being at a funeral, one where you see a loved one laying in the coffin and your final memory--the one that haunts you forever--is how bad he looks. I'm not even sure I'm interested in a 24 movie at this point. The TV series writers ultimately had no respect for Jack Bauer. Why should I?

LOST: The Perfect Ending...

There's a tiny moment near the beginning of each episode of LOST where the title graphic appears. Moving through space, it's blurry but for one small instant; each time it racks into focus, only to quickly blur again as it moves out of the frame. That brief moment of clarity has always been--to me, at least--a metaphor for the show itself. So much about it over the past six years has been blurry and indistinct, just on the edge of being understandable.

No more. Last night's 2 and 1/2 hour series-ender brought the entire show into sharp focus. It was a moving and fitting end to the show, one that was thoughtful, respectful (both to the story and its fans), and satisfying in every way. In fact, other than the surprising (and much shorter) final moments of the season-ending episode of Newhart (when Bob woke up in bed with his wife--Suzanne Pleshette--from his PREVIOUS hit series to reveal his new series was all just a dream), I don't think there's ever been as perfect an ending to a series as last night's final episode of LOST.

In the end it boiled down to one thing: everyone found each other, as they were meant to. All the people who were lost at the beginning of the series, thrown together on that island, stopped floundering in their own lives and moved on to new ones. I've always felt the show's central theme was of redemption. I still feel that way, but maybe I should also add the redeeming and healing factor of love to that. The moments when characters we've followed for years touched each other and remembered all they went through on the island were incredibly moving. All was remembered, but at the same time forgotten and forgiven. The dead rose. The living soared.

The show ended the way it began: with the blink of an eye. I'm always a huge fan of any movie or TV show that goes out the way it came in. And at the very end, when the LOST title graphic popped up yet again, it was as sharp and clear as a diamond.

My LOST story...

LOST ends tonight and it's been a six-year roller coaster ride. I have loved and hated this show, and have abused my TV set during its run, sometimes yelling at it when the show is particularly frustrating, sometimes looking for something of considerable weight to throw at the screen when it was MORE than particularly frustrating. But all in all, it's been one of the most amazing TV series of my lifetime, and that includes 24, Seinfeld, 30 Rock, I Love Lucy, and My Mother the Car (okay...maybe not that last one so much, other than the awesome title).

My own personal history with LOST begins a little bit before just about anyone else's, though. I don't normally blog about things work-related, but this is all history now, and I'm not telling any state secrets. In 2004, I was the Director of Programming for Comic-Con International, here in San Diego. My job at that time--which I had from 2000 through 2007 (before moving onto my current position as Director of Print and Publications)--was to schedule and coordinate all the programs, panel discussions, and presentations for the four days of the show, a schedule that at times topped 400 separate events over the course of one Thursday-Sunday weekend.

In 2004 the schedule was set when I got a--literally--last minute phone call from one of the exhibitors at the show who held the trading card rights for a new show ABC was going to debut in the fall called LOST. I had heard nothing about it at that point, but this guy assured me it was going to be the next big thing. Three of the actors--the three "leads," he assured me again--were in Los Angeles that weekend and they could come down on Saturday and do a panel, only it HAD to be Saturday. (As an aside, there was--and still, at times, is--this myth that Saturday is the "busy" day at Comic-Con. In truth, all four days are incredibly busy, with wall-to-wall people. If you bring the right thing, you could fill a room at 2:30am on a Tuesday, if need be.)

We literally shoe-horned a LOST panel into the schedule, for first thing on Saturday, July 24, in the massive Ballroom 20, which seated 4,250 people. It was to start at 10:00am, which was right when the convention officially opened, so having a packed room was an iffy proposition at best, especially for a fairly unknown quantity. The three stars the exhibitor mentioned were Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, and Dominic Monaghan. The latter's name was the magic one that really got the ball rolling. Monaghan had been one of the stars of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and had appeared at Comic-Con before to promote those movies, so there was a built-in fan following already there. Lilly was an almost-unknown, appearing in just a few acting roles, and Matthew Fox had been at Comic-Con in 2002 to introduce his new show, Haunted, about an ex-cop who can communicate with the ghosts of dead people who were murdered and wanted their deaths solved. (The show lasted one 13-episode season, but Fox was also known for the hit show Party of Five.) Also on the panel were Damon Lindeloff, Bryan Burke, and Paul Dini, the comics and animation writer who wrote for LOST during the first season. (Executive producer/co-creator J.J. Abrams--best known at that point in time for the TV series Alias and Felicity--was mentioned as appearing, but he was unable to do so.) The panelists showed the pilot episode, giving the Comic-Con audience the first look at the new show almost 2 months before it debuted on ABC. No one else outside of the network brass had seen it at that point.

Fox, Lilly, and Monaghan were literally driven up the front walk and brought in the front door and whisked upstairs to Ballroom 20. Their schedule, as I remember it, was very tight, with them driving down from Los Angeles, and having to drive back to catch a plane back to Hawaii to shoot on Monday morning. I do remember they signed trading cards at the exhibitor's booth (which revealed his true passion for this new, unknown series) for an hour or so. And then they were gone.

The subsequent popularity of LOST and its appearance at Comic-Con BEFORE it aired on network TV opened things up for other genre shows to "premiere" at the convention. Heroes followed, along with Chuck, The Bionic Woman, Fringe, V, Flash Forward, even Glee (decidedly NON-genre, but with a fan base and buzz all its own even before appearing at Comic-Con last year at the first-ever off-site programming room at the Hilton Bayfront hotel), to name just a few. All of them had their Comic-Con debut before enthusiastic crowds. Some of the shows hit big, some not so big, some really big only to really fall later. But none captured the imagination like LOST. The show visited Comic-Con each year since 2004, with producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindeloff almost always in attendance, and usually a star or two along for the ride.) (Here's an interview we did in 2006 with Cuse and Lindeloff--and Hurley himself, Jorge Garcia--for Comic-Con's Update magazine.) The producers of LOST realized early on the importance of the Comic-Con audience and reached out to them every year while the show was in production. I--and more importantly, a whole lot of other people--am going to miss seeing them at Comic-Con this year and in the years to come.

MacGruber (2010)

How do you take a throwaway Saturday Night Live sketch that's a parody of a beloved late-'80s adventure series and turn it into a big screen movie?

Evidently you don't, if MacGruber, the latest in a series of SNL dogs to reach the screen, is any indication. The movie, starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillipe, Powers Boothe, and Val Kilmer, debuted this weekend. Equally evident, I was one of the few people in America who fell for the ads and actually opted to go see it in a theater, instead of waiting three months for it to hit DVD.

I wanted to watch something totally mindless, but I was hoping for totally mindless and entertaining. Somewhere along the line, the entertaining part escaped the minds of the filmmakers. MacGruber is pretty much an unfunny mess of a movie, and for some strange reason the writers decided to make it as dirty as possible, as if this was the reason why people would opt to see an expanded version of it on the big screen and not wait for the next 3-minute sketch on SNL. Here's an example of their comedic genius: the villain's name is Dieter Von Kunth. Try saying that on network TV, even after 11:30pm.

There are a few funny moments in this mercifully short (barely 90 minutes) movie, and most of them involve Kristen Wiig. I truly believe Wiig is as close to Carol Burnett as we get in this day and age (a comparison I once reserved for Amy Poehler). Give her a variety/sketch show and I'll watch it, but I guess that concept is a quaint leftover from the Golden Age of TV (although technically SNL is itself within that television genre). 

Thanks to this miserable experience at the cinema, I'm desperately trying to build a time machine out of bottle caps, a tennis ball, a #2 pencil, and a (thankfully unused) condom, so I can go back in time and get my nine bucks back. I'll let you know how that all turns out.

Friday Foto #130...

Doesn't this photo look like a model? From the 30th floor of the Marriott Marquis hotel, looking towards Moscone Center and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, plus the Museum of Modern Art. To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!