why don't you close your eyes and reinvent me
Remember how last year was possibly the worst NYE of my life, full of the entirety of Marin County flooding and the Macparents watching Serenity with me and totally *not* getting it? Let's just say this was the complete opposite. Through the extent of 24 hours I was in the North Bay, the East Bay, the city itself, and the waaay South Bay. Gotta love CalTrain. And let's also put it this way: we went to sleep at 6-ish AM on January 1st. I woke up for work this morning at 6-ish. And I certainly didn't sleep for 24 hours.
But to my actual post: The West Wing. I've been kind of stupid in talking about this on my journal, mostly because I was always so embarassed that I didn't watch the show. I've been posting random things, but nothing that would let on: Oh my god, I've never seen [episode] before, and I can't believe [event] happened! See, in 1999 when TWW started I just didn't really watch TV except for XF. Then right when I gained the ability to catch up with the show, Sorkin left and everyone started to lament the onset of The Suck. So I thought, eh, not worth it? Some day? When I got a Netfix queue in February 2005, I put the first season on there. And waited until I got home for summer so I could start watching it with Mommac, whom I knew would love it. Only then we were still re-watching XF, and I was busy catching up with GG and obsessing over HP. Onward to this summer: when I got back from Europe, we finally watched the pilot. And we've both been Netflixing it ever since. As she is not a theatre student at university with no time, she's somewhere in season five. I on the other hand, just finished season four's finale: Twenty Five.
I've been waiting for Commencement ever since I wrote this post where I listed my Top Ten music-on-teevee moments, and voleuse brought up the use of Massive Attack's Angel.
That was the best execution of a song used on television, hands down. I mean, I may have been deluded by excellent mixing, but it certainly seems like they used the entire song from start to finish without blending or cutting or repeating! And it just faded in, with that bass line ANYONE would recognise, and it just floated in and out of all the scenes, CJ and Danny talking about Shareef, Amy and Donna talking about Josh, Zoey and Jean-Paul in the nightclub, Taye Diggs being pretty, and they honestly couldn't have created a more palpable feeling of foreboding if they tried. High five, West Wing, high five.
Before that: I really think I can honestly say that Toby's conversation with Andy was the saddest thing I've seen on television. There have been things more heartbreaking or distressing, but there's just some depressing adjective I'm trying to think of right now, and it wins at that. I mean, god. He bought her dream house, and she won't re-marry him because he's too sad. Too sad, and angry, and it was just like a punch in the gut, MY gut, to hear that. But then we had Toby and his monologue to Huck and Molly, and he would torch Yellowstone with napalm and he's only known then for 45 minutes! Babies come with hats!
Zoey's kidnapped, and Bartlet's invoking the 25th, and everything is going crazy. Even though I wanted to rush immediately to Twenty Five, after Commencement ended I got up and jumped around my house, silently shouting, "Oh my god." Of course now my strange sleep schedule has just this minute caught up to me so I have lost all my squee. And am slightly incoherent. Perhaps more tomorrow.
I just. If there's another reason why I've fallen behind on all my teevee this season, it's because any free moment I have I've been watching my TWW Netflix discs. If I have an hour's break between studio and rehearsal, there is never a question of what I should watch next. Unless I am waiting furiously for the US Postal Service to hurry the fuck up, already.
If there was one quote which summed up why this show fits so well with everything I am, it would be this rant of Bartlet's, from War Crimes:
"Words. Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music.
They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume.
These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us
and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't."
I mean, how do you not just fall in love?
But to my actual post: The West Wing. I've been kind of stupid in talking about this on my journal, mostly because I was always so embarassed that I didn't watch the show. I've been posting random things, but nothing that would let on: Oh my god, I've never seen [episode] before, and I can't believe [event] happened! See, in 1999 when TWW started I just didn't really watch TV except for XF. Then right when I gained the ability to catch up with the show, Sorkin left and everyone started to lament the onset of The Suck. So I thought, eh, not worth it? Some day? When I got a Netfix queue in February 2005, I put the first season on there. And waited until I got home for summer so I could start watching it with Mommac, whom I knew would love it. Only then we were still re-watching XF, and I was busy catching up with GG and obsessing over HP. Onward to this summer: when I got back from Europe, we finally watched the pilot. And we've both been Netflixing it ever since. As she is not a theatre student at university with no time, she's somewhere in season five. I on the other hand, just finished season four's finale: Twenty Five.
I've been waiting for Commencement ever since I wrote this post where I listed my Top Ten music-on-teevee moments, and voleuse brought up the use of Massive Attack's Angel.
That was the best execution of a song used on television, hands down. I mean, I may have been deluded by excellent mixing, but it certainly seems like they used the entire song from start to finish without blending or cutting or repeating! And it just faded in, with that bass line ANYONE would recognise, and it just floated in and out of all the scenes, CJ and Danny talking about Shareef, Amy and Donna talking about Josh, Zoey and Jean-Paul in the nightclub, Taye Diggs being pretty, and they honestly couldn't have created a more palpable feeling of foreboding if they tried. High five, West Wing, high five.
Before that: I really think I can honestly say that Toby's conversation with Andy was the saddest thing I've seen on television. There have been things more heartbreaking or distressing, but there's just some depressing adjective I'm trying to think of right now, and it wins at that. I mean, god. He bought her dream house, and she won't re-marry him because he's too sad. Too sad, and angry, and it was just like a punch in the gut, MY gut, to hear that. But then we had Toby and his monologue to Huck and Molly, and he would torch Yellowstone with napalm and he's only known then for 45 minutes! Babies come with hats!
Zoey's kidnapped, and Bartlet's invoking the 25th, and everything is going crazy. Even though I wanted to rush immediately to Twenty Five, after Commencement ended I got up and jumped around my house, silently shouting, "Oh my god." Of course now my strange sleep schedule has just this minute caught up to me so I have lost all my squee. And am slightly incoherent. Perhaps more tomorrow.
I just. If there's another reason why I've fallen behind on all my teevee this season, it's because any free moment I have I've been watching my TWW Netflix discs. If I have an hour's break between studio and rehearsal, there is never a question of what I should watch next. Unless I am waiting furiously for the US Postal Service to hurry the fuck up, already.
If there was one quote which summed up why this show fits so well with everything I am, it would be this rant of Bartlet's, from War Crimes:
"Words. Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music.
They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume.
These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us
and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't."
I mean, how do you not just fall in love?