56Kiefer

Welcome to the first real weekend of NaBloPoMo, after my enthusiasm for the project has started to wane. Today’s post is a quickie: a video of what Fox’s 24 would be like in 1994. Courtesy College Humor.

[video]http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1788161&fullscreen=1[/video]

On Notice: Park in the Walk

Listen, I know you’re important. Clearly, the fact that you arrive at work after all the good spots are gone in your oversized SUV signifies that you’re far more important than the rest of us. But that doesn’t give you the right to park on the sidewalk four days in a row. Drive around until you find a spot. Don’t inconvenience everyone – pedestrians, other drivers in the lot – by blocking half of the sidewalk. And don’t leave a message for security to not ticket you because there’s no available parking. If you’re so important that you can’t look harder for a spot, you’re important enough to pay the ticket when you can’t find one.

Picket Fences

While it’s hard to look at successful people in New York and Los Angeles refusing to do their jobs while I write online for free in the time I’m not working at a non-profit, there is a legitimate backbone to the ongoing Hollywood writer’s strike. Isn’t it the rich getting richer, you ask? In some cases, yes. Some members of the WGA are well off, but that doesn’t mean that some of the brightest minds in Hollywood shouldn’t be compensated for their work appearing in new media. It’s the perfect time for a strike, too, because TV is only just beginning to make its strongest legal steps into the Internet. And though we won’t feel the full force of the strike until January if it continues, action needs to be taken now, so history (the 1988 strike that cost the entertainment industry $500 million) won’t repeat itself, and so that an actor’s strike next year can be avoided.

[United Hollywood]

Weird Science

Though my preference in television has long evolved away from the traditional sitcoms of my youth to hour-long dramas and half-hour comedies with high concepts and no laugh tracks, one throwback show has managed to be one of the few new series this year to keep its grasp on me: The Big Bang Theory. Yes, I know, it follows a lot of the predictable setups and punch lines — hot waitress moves in across the hall from twenty-something physicists, laughs ensue — that dozens of other cookie-cutter sitcoms rely on, but the writers and actors provide interesting variables to the typical equation.

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Consolation Prize

It’s hard, really, to feel bad for Aaron Sorkin. After the runaway success of The West Wing and the critical embrace of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the series’ failure could easily be shrugged off. But for so many fans of Studio 60, its departure from the airwaves marked a significant downturn in the amount of quality television available. If only Sorkin hadn’t felt it so necessary to continue telling us so.

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