Media Glutton, May 13, 2008

I want to confess one of my new guilty pleasures. Last summer I started work on a project that will probably never see the light of day, but it involved doing a heck of a lot of research about modern and classic stage magic, including interviewing magicians and some of the engineers who build tricks. It was pretty freaking cool. As a result, I developed what will probably be an abiding interest in magic and magicians, while at the same time learning just enough to be an annoyingly picky spectator. I'm definitely in the "those who can't, criticize" half of the equation as opposed to the "those who can, do" half. Well, I know one cool mind reading trick, but I flub it about half the time I try. The point is, I think magic's cool, and there's not much magic on TV these days, so I take what I can get. Right now that means watching VH1's Celebracadabra. It's exactly what it sounds like - d-list celebrities learning to do magic tricks and competing with each other each week. Like Dancing With the Stars, but with magic. And the fact that I hadn't heard of half the stars on the show tells you something about who they got to sign on, but that's OK. Because here's the thing: it's actually a pretty good show. The stars (except one) are really trying to learn these illusions and they have real, professional magicians as coaches. The show doesn't reveal how any of the tricks are done, which I think is a good thing, but it does give you an interesting behind the scenes look at magic. I'll still call it a guilty pleasure, but it's one I think more people than magic nerds like me will enjoy. Also, the new magic podcast, Magic Wire, has been doing excellent long interviews with the judges, magician coaches, and some of the celebs from the show. These are really entertaining and informative as well, and have added a whole new dimension to my enjoyment of the series.

Here's something else I feel guilty about. I think the last few episodes of Battlstar Galactica have been sort of dull. There's a lot that's still great about them, but things are moving along very, very slowly. And there was a whole b-plot this week with the President and some visions that, while being excellent character development stuff for her, just ground the show to a screeching halt every time it came on. And not an exciting screech, but instead a really dull, makes you want to fast forward screech. I put the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of show-runner Ronald Moore. Why? Well, because I felt the same way about his season of Carnivale - lots of great, great stuff, but also drawn out and slow and needlessly ponderous at times. Galactica hasn't always been that way, but it sure has seemed that way lately. I think it'll start to pick up this next week as various threads start to come together, but these past few weeks have smacked of creators in love with their ideas and the inner lives of their characters to the point were concerns of plot and pacing slip a little bit. The show's still solid, I'm still looking forward to more and more of it, but for me anyway these last few episodes have been a slump (again, despite lots of cool stuff happening).

This past week I also read a hot new political book that's all the rage in the left leaning blogosphere - Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement. I guess the rap on Taibbi is he's sort of this generations Hunter Thompson, except he stopped doing drugs and is more about going "undercover" and having wild adventures instead of just being himself and having wild adventures. I enjoyed his first book, Spanking The Donkey, but I like this new one much more, even though it suffers some from being unfocused and kind of all over the place. Taibbi admits as much himself from the intro, explaining how the book really is the synthesis of three different ideas that he worked on at different times and sort of forced together. The heart of the book tells of his time "undercover" as a member of Texas Pastor Hagee's megachurch in San Antonio. Here he gives us detailed, hilarious, and occasionally heart wrenching, but always on some level depressing accounts of life inside a church where the pastor and most of the giant congregation believe that the end is nigh and that all we need to do is help Israel out so we can usher in Armageddon. It's nutty stuff to be sure, and Taibbi has lucked out in that since doing his research, John MacCain has actively courted and received John Hagee's endorsement. And the stuff he says is just as offensive and crazy, if not more so, than anything Rev. Wright ever said. This part of The Great Derangement is just about perfect, not too long, not too short. The second section is about how Congress really works these days, focusing first on Republican and then Democratic shenanigans over ear marks. All this stuff is good too, although there's not quite enough of it for my tastes. There's sort of one detailed example from each Congress with not much in the way of synthesis or analysis. Finally Taibbi takes on the 9/11 "Truthers," those deluded conspiracy minded maniacs like the Loose Change jerks who've come up with all sorts of outlandish, unproven, evidence-free conspiracies around 9/11. One of the highlights of the book for me is a fictional transcritpit of the kind of discussion that must have taken place between Cheney, Wolfowitz, and others if the ridiculous conspiracy theories had any basis in fact. He does a terrific job of pointing out just how far fetched it all really is.

I blew through The Great Derangement in a day and a half and really enjoyed it. If any of that sounds interesting to you, then by all means, pick up a copy for yourself. And go see Iron Man. Did I mention that recently? I love that movie...