True Blood: Truly Bad

Its been quite some time since my last post, and I must apologize to the masses of my devoted followers. I made promises. Big promises, and I have not delivered. It's not that I've been apathetic towards the world. I am still annoyed with it, just as much as always. Afterall, it is a grotesque place we live in, and like Will McAvoy, I am on a mission to civilize. So I am back. And I am making a stand for all that I hold dear. I will not stand idly by while innocent citizens continue to willingly consume mindless blabber. And the blabber I refer to is True Blood.

SPOILER.

I'm going to walk you through most of the plot (if you can call it that) of the first four seasons. After reading this, hopefully you'll agree with my decision to cut this shitty show from my television diet and you'll do the same.

Here we go.

Background info: True Blood is a brand of synthetic blood, that once patented and released, prompts vampires to come out of hiding and join humanity since their sustainment can now be artificially satified. We're introduced to the world of the vampires through the blossoming relationship of main characters Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic twenty-something, and Bill Compton, a people-loving, gentelman's vampire. And despite Bill's desire to assimilate, we soon learn that  he is in the minority of his species.  And the other vampires are pretty badass. They fuck and kill as they please and some have lived through some crazy parts of history in their extended undead existence. And it's HBO, so there's lots of blood and sex and hot actors and actresses, and the vampires' blood is basically the a trippiest drug in the universe. Its a wild time in Louisiana. You can get behind this crazy little world. All of a sudden, you dig vampires.

Let's fucking go.

So, now that you know this definitely isn't Twilight and you're sufficiently turned on by one of the Stackhouse siblings, you're ready for some crazy carnage, some serious clashes between vampires and humans, maybe a war, who knows? The possibilities are pretty much endless. Like I said, let's fucking go.

Except it takes quite some time to go. In fact, the whole first season is a slow-moving murder mystery. So we have a world of vampires and human interaction to explore, and the writers choose to make the antagonist some redneck version of a vampire-racist who goes around killing women who are nice to vampires, including Sookie's grandmother (After this tragic event, our protagonist reacts by eating a pie for about five minutes on screen. Exhilarating stuff.). There's only so far a one-dimensional love story and a murder mystery can take you. Halfway through the first season, I am still screaming, "Let's fucking go!" but this time its out of frustration rather than excitement.

But I didn't give up on the show. And thank god, because the second season was awesome. This is where True Blood really hooks its viewers, even if they don't realize it. They are always secretly hoping for another second season, but unfortunately, as you will see, we have come way too far for that to ever happen again.

Season two incorporates a brainwashing church that builds an army to take out the vampires and a maenad (some crazy bitch that worships the Greek god Dionysus) that uses mind control to turn the town into a giant orgy. Plus you get some more information about shapeshifters which are another form of magical creature. The season ends with Sookie shooting lights out of her hands and a main character being kidnapped. Oh shit.

Now you may be concenred about the amount of magical creatures already appearing. Don't worry about it. So far we have vampires, shape-shifters, fairies (although at this point we only know that Sookie is telepathic. Pardon me, while I re-suspend my disbelief), and maenads (just this one, don't worry!). Nonetheless, this is only a fraction of the wild stuff that exists in this universe. And they all seem to hang out in Louisiana.

Then the third season comes about and we're all stoked. True Blood is great right now. It is hitting its stride. And the third season kicks off with a bang. Sookie meets a werewolf and they go out and find Bill at the Vampire King of Mississippi's mansion. Now, we're getting vampire politics. We may even get that war we want. Now we've got werewolves too. They're like the Vampire King's security, except they're all addicted to vampire blood. Okay, you're still with it. I guess we all saw werewolves coming, although we're not thrilled. And now we're a little concerned. There's already a lot of storylines going on, can we really afford more?

In short, no, we can't. At this point, we're following Tara's story as a dumb bitch who is filling the hole in her heart with vampire sex, Sam's story as a shape-shifter who is reunited with his dirtbag family, Alcide's story as a werewolf whose ex is addicted to V, Jason's affair with a girl who hails from a family of trailer-trash Werepanthers (you know, like werewolves, but werepanthers), and Terry and Arlene's possessed child on the way, which keeps the antagonist of the first season on the audience's mind for no reason (the writers have a habit of not being able to drop characters).

Yet none of these stories really have a direct tie to the show's main arc which focuses on the relationship between Bill and Sookie, or maybe the relationship between humans and vampires. Ask any True Blood fan what the main story of the show is at this point and they will be awfully confused. Because these subplots never tie back into the main story. They are essentially plot fodder that serves to sensationalize the universe of True Blood, to condition the audience to accept any and all crazy shit that Alan Ball throws our way.

There is much more that goes on during Season 3, including a long mystery over how Bill came to meet Sookie in the first place. However, only a few of the many story lines are resolved at the end of this season. Everything else is left on a cliff hanger, with Bill left fighting the Vampire Queen, Sookie being transported to Fairy World, and the aforementioned subplots continue into the fourth season.

At this point, I'm getting sick of writing about this show. It is too hard to keep up with all of these characters and supernatural stuff. I'll sum up season 4 and tell you that its more of the same shit from before, but with witches, mediums, ghosts and more love scenes between gay characters. Oh, and the vampires also go SWAT on a witch hide-out because the magic repels their vampire-ness. Therefore, they turn to guns.

I hope this picture of four vampires dressed all in black with rifles and bazookas makes you really think about who is writing this fucking show.

So the writing is bad. The characters are silly and the plot is ridiculous.  And a character's life is threatened pretty much every episode although the audience knows that the writers don't have the balls to kill one off (when they actually did kill a main character they just brought her back as a vampire). Not to mention, it would be very difficult for a fan to tell you what the show is about anymore.  But I still watched. So what made me stop?

I touched upon it earlier. Minor characters are introduced in this show for a reason, usually to serve a certain plot device in the main story (such as Alcide accompanying Sookie to Mississippi), but for some reason, after they serve their purpose, the camera continues to follow them. For seasons and seasons and seasons.

I'm sorry but I just don't care about all these fucking characters, especially when so little time is devoted to actually developing them. Just because the world is unbelievable, doesn't mean the characters have to be. How would real people act in a world like this? That's what I wonder when I'm watching True Blood, because the characters on screen are just as made-up as the monsters and ghouls in Bon Temps.  Instead, over half of an episode is spent "developing" these minor subplots although they have no relevance to the series arc. I don't have the patience.

Great television requires a connection with the human experience. It requires finding truth. But there is none of that left in True Blood. No truth. No human experience, in neither a figurative or literal sense.

LeBron James: A Love/Hate Relationship

I want to make a statement about LeBron James before he wins his NBA title and it's cool to like him again. I have a love/hate relationship with LeBron. I hate the people that hate him and I love the people that love him. Since The Decision, it has become way too easy to hate on LeBron. I've heard every argument for why I shouldn't like this guy:

He isn't going to win his rings on his own! His legacy will never carry the same weight as Jordan's!
How could he go to play with two other superstars?
How could he leave his hometown of Cleveland?

To me, these are all the same argument. I'll tell you how he can leave Cleveland to go play with two other superstars. Cleveland gave him Mo Williams, Anderson Varejao, and Antwan Jamison five years after his name was last spoken on SportsCenter. After LeBron left these stiffs to fend for themselves, that team was the worst in the NBA. Some may argue that that team was built around LeBron James, specifically designed to cater to his talents. Well, obviously that isn't what LeBron wanted. He didn't want a bunch of scrubs that would let him thrive. The guy is a facilitator on the court but when the other players can't hit a shot, it doesn't matter how many opportunities you create for them. I mean, seriously, that team barely had another starter on it; nonetheless, LeBron willed them to the finals one year and the best record in the NBA more than once. It is clear that the Cleveland front office could not provide LeBron with what he wanted. That's on them. He doesn't owe them anything for trying their hardest.

I will say it again. That Cleveland team was terrible. So why would you expect the greatest player of our generation to go back to a small market, to play with a bunch of stiffs, and basically max out their salary cap for years to come? Meanwhile, the rest of the NBA is centralizing the league's best talents into a few select teams.  Come on. It is just fucking stupid for a great NBA player to throw away valuable years of his career for the sake of loyalty and hometown connections. We have no right to judge this guy for his career decision.

Put yourself in the same situation. Imagine you grow up in Philadelphia, love Philadelphia, go to school in Philadelphia, eventually become a professor at Philadelphia University. You do some amazing research there, but your peers aren't quite pulling their weight. When your contract is up, you are offered a job to go teach at Harvard and do research with some of the brightest academic minds in the country.  You decide to accept the offer, and consequently, half the country turns on you.  Now, while you weren't responsbile for the entire city's economy like LeBron James was in Cleveland, the consideration is one that you must make based on your own aspirations and experiences, not based on how others will perceive it. You can't rip a guy for going to a new organization with better managment and better personnel. Employees do this every day.

On that same note, people hate on LeBron for going to play with superstars in free agency. They claim his legacy will be tarnished because he won't win his championships on his own. There are five players on a basketabll team. No one wins it alone. This also goes back to the Cleveland front office argument. If LeBron had a great front office like Chicago did when they brought Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman together, like Boston did when they brought Bird, McHale, and Parrish together, like LA did when they brought Magic, Kareem, and Worthy together, then he might have stayed in Cleveland. The reality is that almost all championship teams in the past 20 years have had a big three in some capacity. Furthermore, many of the elite teams in the NBA right now have a big three. Chicago (Rose, Deng, Boozer, Noah), Boston (Pierce, Garnett, Rondo), OKC (Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka), San Antonio (Duncan, Parker, Ginobli), LA (Bryant, Bynam, Gasol), etc. I choose to think that LeBron values the team rather than being the hero that wins the championship single-handedly (although this is exactly what he is doing this year).

Now, that's why you shouldn't not like LeBron James. Here's why you should like him. It's plain and simple, not difficult to grasp at all. LeBron James is the best player that my generation has ever seen, and more importantly, he may be the best player that I ever get to see play the game.  I am a few years too young to have appreciated Michael Jordan's greatness, so I certainly will not be wasting this short, precious time that I get to witness LeBron James with petty criticisms of his character. I mean, this guy is making every other player in the league look like a grade-schooler when he decides to take it to the hoop.  Can't we just appreciate that?

Jesus Christ people. Everyone is so busy trying to find flaws in LeBron's game and personality and compare him to Jordan that they are missing out on what is turning into one of the best NBA careers of all time. Here's a fun fact: LeBron James just tied his own playoff record with 14 straight games of 25+ points. Jordan never did that. LeBron also is the first player ever to record at least 600 points, 200 rebounds, and 100 assists in a playoff series. Jordan? Nope. Not to mention, he plays point-power forward. Get the fuck out of here. The guy is a freak of nature.

But these aren't reasons that LeBron is better than Jordan; that's not my point. I don't know if he is. My point is that these comparisons don't mean anything because you can find one statistic where Jordan outshines LeBron and others where LeBron outshines Jordan. Meanwhile, you are taking away from the significance of the present achievements when you constantly look backwards to compare LeBron to the greats that came before him.

Yeah, The Decision was handled poorly. Despite the immense funds raised for charity, we all knew that the purpose of this press conference was so LeBron could have his big moment in the spotlight. I concede that this is a good reason to dislike LeBron. The Decision revealed LeBron to be narcissistic and immature, qualities that we never saw from him in Cleveland. It showed that free agency, big market teams, and his title as King James had gone to his head. However, I don't think we as fans are in any position to judge LeBron James. The man has some pretty unique circumstances that surround his life, so I don't expect him to have the same maturity level as someone who has struggled with adversity their entire life. LeBron James was pegged as "The Chosen One" when he was like sixteen years old. And then all he did was live up to the hype and probably exceed it.  The guy is everything they promised us. Imagine what his life must have been like. I would venture that he didn't need to really grow and mature that much. He was universally loved and praised and probably handed everything he ever wanted in life. We cannot sit in our chairs watching SportsCenter and pretend that we have any idea about what this guy's life is about.

In a certain sense, it is actually great that The Decision backfired so tremendously on him. Now, we are finally seeing a maturing and growing LeBron James. Being faced with such animosity and such criticism has really brought the best out in James, as we are now witnessing in this year's playoffs. He is really showing everyone why he may go down as the greatest of all time. While some may still hate on the guy, those people  fail to appreciate a once in a generation talent.

So appreciate him. He's the fucking man and you may never see anyone like him again. In twenty years, when the new generation of athletes is taking over the NBA, and these new superstars are being compared to LeBron James, and your kids ask you how good LeBron was, you can tell them not to worry about it and just to appreciate the players playing right now. Except, that's really cause you don't remember how good James was, because you were too busy comparing him to everyone that came before him.

And then you shoot yourself in the face because you can't deal with the shame. Don't shoot yourself in the face. Get DirecTV.

I hate those commercials and I actually hope the guy that came up with them does shoot himself in the face.

Glad we could end on such a positive note.

Summer 2011: Internship at Samuel Goldwyn Films

Well, I've already changed my list of TV shows. Not because anyone said anything to me. Its Always Sunny and True Blood are not gonna sneak into the top 20, so deal with it. No. What happened was I finished Hung. I watched three seasons of Parks and Recreation, and I finished season one of Battlestar Gallactica.

All were pretty damn good.

So the one of the next few posts will be a review of Hung, True Blood, Bored to Death, and Sit Down, Shut Up. I really recommend you check it out if only to hear me rave about Sit Down, Shut Up, which is an animated comedy created by Mitch Hurwitz and starring Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Henry Winkler, Keenan Thompson, and Cheri Oteri. If you need something to give you a taste of season four of Arrested Development, this may be the show.

But this post will be a personal post so I can get some thoughts and ideas down in writing. I'm going to break it into two parts.

Part One: I talk about my experiences last summer working in LA.
Part Two: I talk about what my goals are for these next few months.

As a note for part two, writing things down makes you like 74% more likely to do them, or something like that. I read Influence by Robert Cialdini and he's full of percentages and interesting tidbits such as that one above! I think his example for writing things down is that the Vietnamese army made American POWs hold contests for who could write the best pro-Vietnamese essays and it made the American soldiers believe the propaganda.

If you can't tell, Cialdini's the fucking man. And to go along with his interesting examples and anecdotes, if you read this book, you will be able to control the minds of friends, strangers, family members, and possibly pets. I say this with no exaggeration whatsoever. The book is a how-to guide for the ego and subconscious .

But I digress. This is Part One. Read the book, and let's move on.

So last summer, I spent my time in Los Angeles working at Samuel Goldwyn Films. I applied to a ton of companies in both film and television because I've got a little messianic complex and I thought I could somehow prevent my fellow humans from enduring any more horrible movies. Of course, on my resume, I described this as "a keen eye for quality entertainment."

I also thought I would love working in Hollywood given my TV series obsession. I've made it a point to not work anywhere unless I absolutely love what I'm doing and at Wharton, everyone is doing finanace or consulting. In contrast, entertainment sounded fun, exciting, and original. It sounded like a career that I could be really happy with. So I went for it.

When I didn't hear back from HBO, I applied through PennLink (the Penn Internship Network) to a few independent film companies. I was told that smaller companies offer really valuable internships because I would be attuned to all aspects of the business.

After some interviews, I got the internship at Samuel Goldwyn, a production and distribution company with approximately ten employees.  (Side note: They just acquired the US distribution rights to The Island President, which is supposed to be awesome and received a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.)  Anyway, while working at SGF, I read scripts, I watched screeners, then I wrote a synopsis and analysis of the film. As you may have read in my last post (if you haven't read it, go back and check it out. It is historic to say the least. And that really is the least I can say about it.), I rarely got to enjoy a decent script and it was even rarer for me to stumble on a watchable movie.

I'm sure you've heard how tough it is to make it in Hollywood, needing to sell your soul, all that jazz. Well, I would say that it is tougher than you think. You could be the most talented person in the world, write a great script, be a stud actor or actress, and it would still be really difficult to get noticed.

Why?

Because there are hoards and hoards of untalented people, who write awful scripts and can't act to save their lives.

It's a tragic tale really. A group of idiots with dreams of fame unknowingly destroy the industry they love from the inside out. Because they are idiots, they never realize what they are doing until it is too late and the Real Housewives of Louisiana has actually been made into a show. Then the world ends. The movie will be called "America" and it is a drama-thriller-action/adventure. I can only hope that in the end, aliens save us before this happens.

No matter, it was actually a really useful exercise to read all of these trainwrecks because it forced me to think critically about why the movies were unsellable. I knew they sucked, but I had to formally explain why the characters were not believable, why the plot didn't make sense, why no one would ever pay to see this fucking film. Since I didn't want a reputation as an intern who passed shit along up to my bosses, I made it a point to be extremely thorough in summarizing and analyzing each film.  Sometimes this really annoyed my boss because she had to read way more than she wanted, but i wanted to be safe and cover my bases. Plus I really liked doing it.

In high school, I loved literary analysis so my job was fun. I definitely improved my writing and my "keen eye for quality entertainment." I had some really incredible experiences too. The highlights of work included going to Los Angeles Film Festival with my boss to screen a documentary about some rich asshole who ripped a lot of people off during the financial crisis. From this, I learned it is really hard to sympathize with someone who is being filmed while on house arrest in his penthosue apartment in Manhattan.

Another awesome highlight was when my boss let me represent the company at a screening at MGM. I actually thought the movie I saw was really interesting and unique (it was written and directed by the guy that played Larry Beale from Even Stevens) and I excitedly wrote up one of my few positive reviews of the summer. But, the next day the head of acquisitions called me into his office and told me he watched ten minutes of it and hated it. Oh well. I appreciated the feedback and it gave me insight as to how decisions were made in the industry.

I learned a lot at Samuel Goldwyn Films and I had a pretty successful and rewarding internship. I loved my boss and we worked really well together. At the end of last summer, she offered me another internship for this year, but I won't be accepting the offer for a few reasons.

By the end of August, I no longer felt the entertainment industry was the right path for me. The first reason was that my job hardly utilized my business background. While I love thinking critically about film and literature, I was not a film or english major like all of the other interns, nor did I have any desire to be.

The second reason was that the business decisions did not necessarily reflect the things I love about business. From my understanding, a script was read by interns, passed up to my boss who was assistant to the M&A executive, then to the M&A executive, then up to another executive, and up again, and so on. If there was disagreement at a high enough level, then I think a film was discussed, but other than that,  it seemed that the vertical structure allowed little time for discussion and less room for collaboration.

Ultimately, I wasn't using my business education and the things I love about business (teamwork, open discussion, collaboration) weren't as prevalent as I would have liked. Since the summer, I've also had a change of heart and an awakening of purpose, and the media in the United States is not something I wish to be a part of at any level.

So my little crusade for improving the entertainment industry ended in a jading. Nonetheless, I loved my time at Goldwyn and I really couldn't have asked for a better experience. I learned a ton about the entertainment industry, I went to LAFF, I got to live in Southern California, and I learned even more about myself. Going into this job, I was very set on a career in TV or film. Like 100% sure this was the right path for me. I was on the executive board of the Media and Entertainment club. I had plans for either HBO or Disney; I was looking ahead years into the future. I was pretty fucking sure. But then I found out that it wasn't for me.

It ultimately boiled down to the fact that I didn't think I could find sustainable happiness working in the entertainment industry. Things were dictated too much by the taste of executives, and I can't imagine that bigger studios operate more collaboratively. This doesn't work for me because I hate the idea of any centralized power with little accountability. You may say, "That is basically any boss, douche bag." Well, I guess I learned that I really don't want a boss in the traditional sense. Honestly, it is ridiculous that in America we claim to value democracy so much, but as soon as we step into our office, we willingly submit to a dictatorship (I heard that in a Michael Moore movie I think). I think there are better ways to do things and I'll find them.

The industry is also too focused on appearances and far too focused on self-gratification. The power of the media is enormous, yet it is wielded in a way that promotes consumerism and tries to help us find happiness outside of ourselves, in things and the lives of others. This is a direct distraction from finding happiness within ourselves. I can't get behind that.

Our education system sucks, but our media continues to air mindless programming. People are starving all over the world and we are trying to figure out which of the forty-four cooking reality TV shows to watch. The media could help solve these problems, but they don't. No, I don't think I could find sustainable happiness working in an industry like that. I want to help solve the world's problems, not distract the world from them.

Also, I think the internet is going to make almost all aspects of the media obsolete in like ten years so good riddance.

Even though I didn't find a future career in LA, my experience significantly shaped my future, moreso than if I would continued to pursue a career in entertainment. I met some amazing people, including my awesome French roommate AP and my mentor, one of the greatest guys I've ever met, John. Meeting these people alone made my two months so worthwhile. I also got to visit DisneyLand, two of my best friends came out to visit me for a week and I love them dearly for it, and I got to see all of the classic tourist sites.

But most importantly, my time taught me what was really valuable, what I really want in a job and with my future. It helped me find happiness by showing me where it wasn't. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do, but until I find it, I'm gonna keep searching for a good life.

JG

TV Is Where It's At

TV is where it's at.

Last summer, I interned at Samuel Goldwyn Films in Los Angeles. It was an awesome experience, but over the course of the summer, only one or two scripts out of the few dozen I read were any good.  Actually, most were awful. What I learned in my time in Southern California is that most screenwriters can't seem to get a story moving without cliche and predictable plot points. Needless to say, it was very rare that I found myself really loving a character or really enthralled in a story

(If you are interested in screenwriting, read Story by Robert Mckee. It really sets you above the competition and will help you improve your story telling!)

But I don't blame the screenwriters. It's tough to write a great story. It's even tougher to write a great story and fit it in an hour and a half while developing characters and evoking some sort of emotional response. I get it. It is tough. But the scripts still sucked.

I remember one in particular about a giant, conscious ceramic rabbit that is constantly getting shipped around from place to place, home to home, you get the picture. Now, I know what you are thinking: this rabbit's resilience in the face of adversity must have been a tale of great heroism!  That's what I thought, but shockingly, the story was not very good.

My favorite part was when one character (a babysitter who will not rest until all ceramic rabbits are destroyed, or at least that's how I remember it) had such a deep hatred for this fragile bunny that she stole it from the children she was watching and drove it to the dump in hopes to incinerate it.

Are you biting your nails just thinking about what is going to happen to the rabbit?

Of course you're not.

Cause it is a fucking ceramic rabbit, and a ceramic rabbit is a terrible protagonist.

In a nut shell, this is the problem in Hollywood: screenwriters come up with a story, write it, but don't consider if anyone in this country wants to go see a nomadic china bunny have a fucking heart warming adventure. No one does.

Obviously TV has a lot of shitty content too, and there are probably more great movies than there are great TV shows. But the landscape of story telling is changing. And right now, the real geniuses, the real masters of story telling -  they are moving into television. This is seen from the bottom of the industry to the top: film is falling apart and the young talent is going to TV. There are still great movies here and there (the rest of America and I can't wait for The Dark Knight Rises), but for every good movie, you have twenty bad pictures and one John Carter. And I'd say, for every good script, you have a thousand bad scripts and two John Carters. That's not a fair trade off.

More often than not, a great show provides me with so much more than a great movie. A great show will immerse you in the lives of all the characters, not just the protagonist. If it is a drama, it will make you laugh. If it's a comedy, it will add suspense. A great show incorporates all aspects of story telling. A great show should tell you something about yourself and something about the world. It should be complete, building from episode to episode, season to season, always with an end goal in mind from the very beginning.

For some reasons, many shows lose me on this aspect. True Blood, Entourage, Weeds, and even Dexter have fallen on my list because the quality of the series is not consistent throughout. While I love these shows, I still evaluate them not just on my enjoyment in their prime, but the story as a whole. How did the story progress, is it consistent with these characters, and did I enjoy each step along the way?

In the upcoming weeks, I will be reviewing all of the shows I have watched and giving you my honest recommendations. I'll be posting links and videos to try and give you the best picture of why you should or shouldn't watch a TV show. I hope you enjoy my opinions. I've watched a lot of TV and I take a lot of pride in my list.

First, I'll start with shows I never finished.

I started watching the first seasons of these shows, but I couldn't get into making them a full time watch. Nothing personal against these shows, but there is a lot of TV out there and if something isn't going to get to the point early on, I will usually come back to it later.  I'll do my best to explain why I stopped watching these shows and I'm open to fans of these shows convincing me to start back up :

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer 
• The Walking Dead
• Prison Break
• Boardwalk Empire
• The Hard Times of RJ Berger
• Battlestar Galactica
• Deadwood
• Carnivale
• Archer
• Hung (Season 2)

Then I'll start my list of 30, ranking and explaining each show in order until we finally reach number one. Here is a taste to get you hungry.

30. Bored to Death
29. Sit Down, Shut Up
28. True Blood
27. American Horror Story
26. Fringe (Season 3)
25. Modern Family (Season 2)
24. Eastbound and Down
23. The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret
22. Spartacus
21. Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 6)

Fuck this guy, right. You probably love at least one of these shows? Are you having a hard time wrapping your head around how it's not even cracking my top 20? Good. Come back and learn why.

You'll also be hearing about the shows I'm currently watching:

• Parks and Recreation
• Veep
• Girls

And shows I plan on adding to that list:

• Homeland
• Mad Men
• How I Met Your Mother
• Luther
• Heroes
• Wilfred
• United States of Tara
• Doctor Who
• Rescue Me
• 24
• Shameless
• The Office

I love TV and I hope to share that love with you. I will do my best to help you avoid all that shit that is out there (as I've mentioned, there is a lot) and make sure you watch the good stuff. It is my ultimate goal to encourage one person to watch LOST or The Sopranos or really anything else in my top 10 (there's another little preview for you). If I can do that, I have changed the world for the better.

Let's do this. 

JG

A word.

A word. 

That's all I want in this first post: a word with you. I'd like to introduce myself and this blog, preview things to come, and hopefully, generate a little excitement in the process. Now, if you are already starting to feel that tingle, focus on something mundane and/or disgusting because you really don't want to blow your load on the first paragraph. The fun is just getting started. Take a deep breath, push your butt cheeks out, and take it one word at a time. No one is going to embarrass themselves today. Not on my watch.

Now, since I will be posting fun and interesting topics, tracking all aspects of my life, I am assuming that you, my future, beloved audience, will be filled with fun and interesting people. And to satisfy such a diverse and eclectic audience, I refuse to limit myself to one topic or theme. I have too much to say and too short of an attention span to break it up into separate blogs. 

This is not a "Personal" blog, although it will certainly have personal musings, tales of growth and my experiences, lessons from my failures and successes, revelations, and my unfiltered, honest perspective on the world and on life.  But, that sounds more like a journal than a blog. I'm new to this so I'm going to assume there's a difference and I will sprinkle these nuggets sparingly and sporadically throughout my posts. I will not journal at you. 

This is not a "Television" blog although I will likely be trashing some of your precious guilty pleasures while singing glorious praises for other shows that you may never have known existed. But being a TV critic blogger? Really? I don't know. This would be way too one-dimensional and even more cliche. If I did this, I'd hate myself, and then you'd have to hear me whine when I blogged about my personal life. It would destroy the blog from the inside out. Is that something you really want? No, it isn't. That's why I'm not doing just a television blog. Plus, I know that some people will dismiss my rankings since I've yet to watch Mad Men.

This is not a "Political" blog, although I can guarantee you will hear, and possibly disagree with, my anti--government sentiments and free market economic beliefs. For example, I think that law is force, taxation is theft, and any job that government does can be performed more efficiently by the private sector. This is not a "Ron Paul" blog either, but if you couldn't tell from the previous statements, I support the man wholeheartedly on all of his positions, especially foreign policy, monetary policy, and ending the War on Drugs. I can't talk about that all the time though for fear I'll be targeted by the feds. And it is really hard to be funny when talking about our country falling apart. That's why I'm not doing a political blog.

This is not a "Spiritual" blog, but I will be hypothesizing about esoteric and ethereal concepts, such as ancient super civilizations, cosmic dimensions, collective consciousness, the existence of mythical creatures, tying Buddhism to metaphysics, psychic abilities, and much more. I find these things fascinating and I'm not entirely sure that modern schools of thought have it all figured out. This is not a "Futurist" blog either, although I will always be throwing in my opinions on how technology can change the world and make it a better place. Personally, I think we already have unfathomably advanced technology hidden away at some super secret base, and the implications of releasing this information will be paradigm-shifting. Hell, the positive implications of legalizing Hemp would be paradigm-shifting. Anyway, this is a little outside the norm, so I'm not doing a spiritual or futurist blog.

Instead, this is a mixture of all of the above, and whatever else I feel like putting in (I know I'm really narrowing down the scope of topics). You can expect to never know what to expect, because I don't know what I'm going to write before I write it. It depends on my mood and what has my attention. But whatever is on my mind, no matter how unpredictable or off the wall, I promise it will be focused. While topics will vary, posts will stick to one topic. After reading my interests and opinions, I hope you will use the  comments as a great place for discussion and debate! Or if you want to punch me in the mouth cause I sound like a naive little bitch, just let me know and that'll be cool too! In future posts, I'll go through my certified list of 25+ TV show recommendations: countdown style. I'll track a few of my entrepreneurial ventures and new hobbies going forward and keep you up to date on the stages of development. You'll get to know me, and eventually, grow to love me in a weird internet freudian kind of way (at least I hope). And you'll have front row tickets to my mental breakdown when it finally happens.

To finish off my word, I'd like to acknowledge that if I honed in on just one topic, it may be easier to market this blog and to draw a lot of traffic. But, like all the kids are saying nowadays: "Fuck that!" It would just be way too hard to pick one.  I believe everything in this world is interconnected. I think all the crazy shit floating around in my head should be too, and this is my way of doing it. I hope you enjoy your time on this "blogspot" (is that even what this is called? should i start learning blogging lingo? blingo?) and find it to be a safe and warm environment. 

Cozy and comfortable. 

Safe and warm.

JG