My Creative Business Workshop

Here’s How I Feel About the Oscars

by Jonathan L. Davis

The thing that I disliked about the 2011 Oscars was NOT Anne Hathaway and James Franco.  They weren’t great, but I was more bothered by the telecast forgetting to tell us that movies are fun, inspiring and transportive. Regardless of how we feel about the nominations or the host or the speeches, Oscars remind us that movie industry has given us something over the course of our lives, cook stuff that made us feel something, and especially— an Oscar favorite — made us cry.  None of the other awards shows do that.  And in 2011, the Oscars didn’t either.  In all my years of watching the 9 hour program, I never saw them forgot that all important element.  Last night, the host was just okay and the comedy was just okay and the nominees were just okay, but they didn’t forget to celebrate the industry.  All I ask out of an Oscars show is to remind us - often with montages that include movies that were never nominated - that we LIKE movies.  Just tell us why we’re here.  And so it seems lots of people enjoyed the tragic romance on Titanic; Brad Pitt was once entertained by a movie about two gargantuas; Reese Witherspoon’s favorite movie is Overboard.  Cute.  So Oscar did its job.     

Also: I get that the Oscars are stodgy and the choice for best picture of the year is usually debatable, if not downright absurd.  But I don’t want a future where Star Trek 2 wins.  Why start being “cool” now?  Why change horses midstream.  An Oscar winner can be comfortably liberal but not outright transgressive. An Oscar winner can push the envelope but be can’t be too alienating.  It can be a genre movie but it has to feel inclusive, inclusive to older white men.  I think that’s great.  Really.  If you want something else, you have the other award shows.  I can’t handle a world where Rise of the Planet of the Apes wins Oscars.. not after Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas and Back to the Future already went down.  If Dark Knight Rises is any good, I think it will makes its way into a nomination. Much like Lord of the Rings, there will just be too big a wave to suppress and the Academy will give it the same trilogy ending congeniality award.  But hopefully that will just be a very brief bone thrown to a certain sect of the American public that inexplicably want the Oscars to validate the idea that a super hero movie or a space movie can be just as important as say, A Beautiful Mind (one of my least favorite Oscar winners).  I agree with you but the Oscars never will.  If you need that validation, check the summer box office numbers.  But let the Oscars be the Oscars.   

Women Being Mean To Nerds Online

Post by Jonathan L. Davis

This piece about a girl who went online and dated a nerd has already gone viral and it’s already gotten tons of attention.  And it’s definitely in that aggravating category of Internet posting where an extremely flawed piece is so popular that the author will likely write off legitimate criticism as “controversy.”  It’s the reality show contestant approach to popularity. 

If the Internet is still the Internet, then my bet is she will write a follow up article and she will quote the most unhinged responses.  And then her defense will be as follows:

1) “Nerds are IN right now.  Nerds rule the world.  So I’m the one being counterculture!”

There are silicon valley computer and programming inventors who are powerful and wealthy.  They are IN.  Because they are powerful and wealthy.  Regular workaday silicon valley employees are NOT IN. 

There are also good looking people who occasionally wear glasses and have some familiarity with Star Wars and X-Men and the big name comic writers.  They are called geek-chic.  They are IN.  For the moment.  The rest of the nerd community are the people who do the real work, watching Torchwood: Miracle Day, bagging and boarding comics from the New Universe line, playing Magic: The Gathering and wondering if their software is compatible with Apple Lion.  They are NOT IN.  They are not geek-chic. If you think you’re being contrarian by making fun of real nerds, you’re STILL a cliche.  Sorry.  

2) “People are allowed to have preferences.” 

I agree with this.  If you don’t like nerds, you don’t have to like nerds. If you like a guy with Umbros, like that guy with Umbros.  If you don’t like that awkward guy with the Strikeforce: Morituri t-shirt on, you don’t have to like him. No one’s forcing you to like him.  But it’s one thing to tell a guy quietly by the school locker that you aren’t interested and whole other thing to make fun of him in front of the school auditorium.  It was not nice to name the harmless guy you went on an anonymous Internet date with.  It’s not charming.  It’s not a Carrie Bradshaw “wow, I really do like traditional guys after all; isn’t THAT interesting” moment.  That’s a “wow, I’m the two-dimensional extra from Gossip Girl” moment. 

3) “I was being mean.  So what?”

Because you didn’t know WHY it was mean.  It was mean without any real insight other than stuff we’ve already known about dating on the Internet since 2001.   People are shallow.  Call the paper.  There are human beings on the other end of those search parameters. Usually.

And now for an aside.  One last thing to say about Internet dating in general.  I’ve dated online; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.  And if you do it right, it’s a great opportunity to meet someone you wouldn’t normally meet.  So yes, it’s been said before, sure, and I’m married and out of this game so it’s pretty easy to say again, but here’s my advice for Internet daters who don’t want to be single in perpetuity:

It’s not a deli.  You can’t order people the way you want them.  If you do it that way, you’ll get a sandwich that only looks like the sandwich you ordered.  When you get home, that turkey will taste a lot like pastrami and there’s a whole bunch of extra mayonnaise you didn’t ask for.  They’ll fuck you in the drive-through.  And in the immortal words of Joe Pesci, they ALWAYS fuck you in the drive-through.

The Show Torchwood: Miracle Day Has Such a Specific Name

By Jonathan L. Davis

Torchwood is a spin-off of Doctor Who (note the anagram) and it’s not a bad show.  Promo shots of TV cast members holding guns or standing in barren landscape/folding their arms/putting their hands in their pockets/staring off into the sky in that way that no one actually does, those are the things I love and hate about TV.  On the one hand, you say to yourself: “ooh, familiar people going on a serialized adventure….”  On the other hand, it’s really corny.  I don’t think there can be a cornier title than Torchwood: Miracle Day, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  (I’m a hypocrite; I once wrote a comic book based on the Sy Fy show Eureka called Eureka: Dormant Gene.)   Torchwood reminds me a lot of Joss Whedon’s Angel show, spun off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Both shows were spun off from a show with a huge following.  Both shows star an immortal man fighting the never ending fight against evil.  Both shows decided to start off with a “Matlock-like” structure, in which each episode was very self contained and that didn’t please the audience, so they went in the opposite direction, becoming so continuity heavy that it’s impenetrable to new viewers.  Like Angel before it, Torchwood has pluses over its flagship show.  It’s a lot more unpredictable, probably about 50 % less campy, and there’s high kill rate/ cast turnover, so it’s edgy.  In a nice change of pace, Torchwood’s dashing lead character is bi-sexual.  He’s still your classic adventurer type with a dark past, but he just happens to dig guys.  Over the last couple seasons, he’s leaned more towards gay and I think that suits the character better.  This year the show is an American/UK hybrid with a ten episode, 100% serialized story with the “high concept” that no on earth can die and we find out that this is bad, and we have an organization of people that’s trying to stop it while calling themselves Torchwood for absolutely no reason.  But it works and now I’ve just admitted to watching Torchwood: Miracle Day even though a part of me would rather not watch it, so I can say things like: “Are you enjoying your Torchwood: Miracle Day?  How is your Torchwood: Miracle Day treating you?”

Delaying Real Housewives of Beverly Hills a Week Because Cast Member Commits Suicide

Posted By Jonathan L. Davis

In light of the tragic event, Bravo, owned by NBC, has decided that the show will air one week later than when viewers would normally be expecting it.  I can only imagine what an enormous comfort this must be to the families and friends of their deceased loved one.  Some viewers may be disappointed that they’ll have to wait an extra week to watch the chicanery and shenanigans of these charming, wealthy ladies.  But the extra 7 days will give everyone time to heal.  Self inflicted death can be a downer.  But you know what else is a downer? Not seeing the drinking binge Susan goes on when she misses her weekly botox appointment.  So these two downers cancel each other out, and that equation equals a 168 hour waiting period.  Perhaps some NBC executives will be hard on themselves for not delaying it longer or not cancelling the season altogether.  But I hope they pat themselves on the back.  Because it shows that they care just enough but not too much.

New Idea: Scheduling Your Life

by Jonathan L. Davis

The new schedulers are popular because they’re cross platform.  You can see your schedule on your laptop, your smartphone and your tablet.  It helps you plan your day.  But what happens when you can’t see your schedule?  What are you going to do?  One idea that I’ve been playing with is a scheduler that appears out of thin air, materializing out of the subatomic particles in the sky.  Then you can look at your schedule whenever you want.  Your schedule can hover next to your face as you walk around the town.  Problem solved. 

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Blame it on the a-a-alcohol.  There’s R2, getting his buzz on. “Whatcho doin, R2D2’?”  “Chillin at the Holiday Inn. Feelin’ on each other and sippin’ some Hen. One thing leading to another let the party begin.”

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R2D2 is trashed from partying really hard and he wants to drink more back in his hotel room. 

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