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Showing posts from June, 2009

The Arrested Development of Niche Audiences

I've been spending time lately rewatching Arrested Development . If you haven't had the chance to watch it, you really should . It's a show that's so intricately designed, metaconscious, and intertextual that it just had to be too smart for most people. It showed. During its run, Arrested Development averaged between four and six million viewers. Despite how brilliant and hilarious the show was, this was its viewership. For years, fans have clamored for a movie. Jeffrey Tambor has flip flopped on talk shows and interviews all along the way confirming and denying it. But here's the thing: if folks were to watch this movie, how would it do? With the medium of film largely accordianic, could a narrative that continues in the style of the TV series translate to a 100 minute film? Does a score made largely of ukuleles even sound good in a gigantic theater? There are those who fear when art goes mainstream that it must change to appeal to masses. In this situa

Advanced Theory: What a Resume Says about Art

In the ongoing saga of your beleaguered writer friend looking for employment, I spent much of yesterday tweaking and retweaking my resume. The night before, I was going over it with my mother who suggested I add a list of qualites, i.e. buzzwords that tickle the jollies of corporate America . I understand the need to do this and I did in fact put a table of qualities I have on the top of my resume (which is well crafted and smartly utilizes the Twentieth Century font, Windows's answer to Apple's Futura), but I wonder how exactly this makes anyone stand out. Maybe the reason why I haven't been called back to any interviews was because my resume previously lacked buzzwords like "team player" and "innovative" but how innovative is it really to use the same word everyone else is using to get attention? Isn't it more innovative to not use the word "innovative?" The same thing happened to my GRE scores for the writing section. Both times I t

The Big, Bad World of What's Next

I'm speaking at my old school, Tynan Elementary, for their graduation ceremony today. It was a great honor to have been asked and I've been all bundled up in my head about how I was going to write this speech and not going over these little kids' heads. On top of that, I've been rather depressed about looking for work. So it's amazingly ironic that I'm giving five minutes of advice to kids about not being scared of the future while I'm petrified (scared, frozen stiff like the citizens of Pompeii, the whole nine yards) of it myself. Still, I think I managed not to be too complex, extremely topical, and wide reaching and multi-layered in my approach. You be the judge. Oh, I also made an Explosions in the Sky reference. I'm pretty sure no one will catch that, though. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thirteen years ago, I was in the same position you’re in right now. I was excited about the summer, thi