Tuesday, January 03, 2006

The Last Arrested Development(?)

I had to watch this thing twice to wrap my head around the cheeky insider-ness that they decided to go out with.

In the episode there was any number of references to the impending cancelation, the most overt being Ron Howard's naration repeatedly telling the audience to "Tell their friends." The incredibly abrupt (and for a reason I'm not quite sure of other than as a stunt, Live) conclusion left no time for fans of the show to get misty eyed. Which is perhaps why AD failed so brilliantly. Your average Bluth fan didn't want to have a misty eyed conclusion where the family learned to get along and George Sr. got out of jail, we wanted tense, akward, confusion. Now if only we could figure out how to sell awkward confusion as entertainment to the rest of America we'd be ok.

Note to Showtime my household has never been a subscriber to your channel but would gladdly pay for the privledge of watching new episodes of Arrested Development.

Our Third Impression of The Strokes


About half of the new Strokes album is solidly enjoyable. It deserves at least as much space on my iPod as the last Thunderbirds Are Now! album. This comparrison may seem unfair as the Strokes are expected to be amongst the biggest most significant bands around and TAN! are quite simply not.

No one said artistic serendipity was a reliable career resevoire and perhaps we shouldn't be angry at the Strokes for trying out some new moves (even if said moves are kind of gawdy, by which I mean all the shredding guitar work). Why can't it be enough that five dudes got together and made a pretty okay rock album. I know in my heart that it's not enough I guess right now I just feel bad. I couldn't make an album half this good (though I could for sure choose better artwork, come on guys!). Ask yourself are you holding the Strokes up to standards you could never match?