This is the month of syrupy Christmas specials and movies.  For every classic, such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, there will be about 20 horribly lame attempts at creating new classics.  In between all these specials, regular shows on the broadcast networks go on hiatus, and the cable networks new seasons don’t begin until next month. 

What’s a couch potato to do? 

Turner Classic Movies is putting on a month of GREAT stuff.  First, it’s Frank Capra month. You’ll be able to see some of his movies that are not It’s A Wonderful Life.  They air on Monday nights during the month. 

Wednesdays are Humphrey Bogart days, and this coming Wednesday (Dec 16) is a beaut.  During the day you can see some of his early gangster films, and his later WWII patriotic films, but in the evening you’ll be able to catch some of his very best movies: The Maltese Falcon (“when you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it“) , Casablanca (“of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine“), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (“nobody puts one over on Fred C. Dobbs“), and The African Queen (“there ain’t nothing so complicated as the inside of a torpedo“). 

And on New Years Eve, they’ll be showing a Thin Man marathon, and if you just can’t stand another Christmas show, there’ll be a Sherlock Holmes marathon beginning on the evening of Christmas day.  Most of the movies will be the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce ones, but they’ll also show The Hound of The Baskervilles, starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee — letter boxed, no less!  (Not to be confused with the movie of the same name starring Richard Greene and Basil Rathbone, airing earlier that evening.)

If we have to watch classics in December, then it might as well be some good ones.  Check the network’s program listing here.

To pursue their happiness, which is apparently sometimes difficult in other parts of the world.

I say if it’s free, it’s for me.

That motto is a good one for software, but doesn’t work so well for “free entertainment”.  The former is usually decent, whereas the latter is usually pretty bad.  As you might have guessed, it takes far more effort and care, not to mention money, to make good entertainment than to write functional code.

Here are two GREAT pieces of entertainment that are totally free to partake.  (Well, apart from paying for internet access — but then, if you’re reading this, then you’ve already got that covered.)

• Spaced
• Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store

After seeing an episode of the BBC TV show Spaced I was intrigued enough to actually buy it on DVD.  The first series is brilliant, and I’ll be watching the second one tonight.  You can see all the episodes for free (well, at the price of sitting through some commercials) and try it out for yourself.  It’s a smart, well-written show, in the vein of things you might see from Kevin Smith, but in my opinion more intelligent.  (So, if you like Kevin Smith’s work, but wish he would be just a little bit deeper, then Spaced deserves a look.)

Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store is a charming short story written by Robin Sloan.  And I’m saying this as someone who dislikes the short story format, so I think that’s saying a lot.  I’m always gob-smacked by good writing, which causes me to writhe in a melange of envy, anguish, and despair.  (Anyone who pretends at writing will know what I mean.)

It’s not often that we get to find out how a canceled show would’ve continued, so it was with a bittersweet pang that I found what the makers of Eli Stone had in mind for continuing the rest of the story. 

Usually, under performing shows gets yanked, and we never hear another thing about it, except maybe from other fans posting their comments at IMDB or Amazon.  Characters that we’ve welcomed into our homes and our lives, and who we’ve looked forward to hearing from every week, are suddenly just gone, with no explanation, no advisory bulletin, and no word on whether unaired episodes will ever air.  I understand that show business is a BUSINESS, and everyone is in it to make money, and the networks aren’t running a charity, but it does seem a tad unfair that a show with “only” 3 million or so viewers is considered a failure.

There’s a famous quote by Hunter S. Thompson about the music industry which I’ve seen often.  By all accounts from people with direct experience, it is considered to be an apt and trenchant description:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

I once saw Hunter S. Thompson give a lecture.  This was in the mid-seventies, but even then he was famous as a “Gonzo journalist“.  For me and a few friends, living as we did among the cornfields of the vast fly-over region of this country, it seemed an unlikely chance to observe a major figure from the counter-culture movement, so we figured that it would be stupid to miss out on the experience. 

The experience was, to say the least, disappointing.  I don’t know what exactly we expected, but afterwards over sundaes at the local Howard Johnson (um…we were in high school and it was close to our curfews), we all agreed that the talk he gave was rambling and pointless, and it seemed it would never end.  In retrospect I suppose it is unsurprising, given his recreational drug use proclivities.  However, the experience left me with a rather jaundiced view of the man, who seemed to me was past his prime, and unlikely to produce anything particularly notable again.

That’s a quote from Stanley Bing, who is a columnist for Fortune magazine.  I came across it in a recent post he made in his blog.  (No, I didn’t dream this up.  There really is a Bing Blog.)  He’s also written several books, including one that I bought, “Crazy Bosses“.  (I’ve had a few of those myself.)  He’s written lots of other books.  (My favorite title from his oeuvre is perhaps Sun Tzu Was A Sissy.)  He writes about corporate culture, and as described in his blog:

He is also the only writer on business and the workplace who still puts on a suit and tie and goes to do battle with the dragons that breathe fire at corporate America every day.

Judging by the reader comments for his books at Amazon, a fair number of people think his works are either mean spirited or unfair representations of the work place, or they’ve mistaken his works for some sort of business “how to” guide.  Those people are simply naive and clueless.  Bing is, as far as I’ve can tell, the most astute observer of corporate life that I’ve ever read.  Between him and Dilbert, you’ll have a complete picture of the range of life in the corporate rat-race, which can swing from mind-numbing stupidity to ass-puckering terror, sometimes in the same day.  It’s amazing how anything gets produced in this country — and probably a real tribute to those who do the actual work of producing things.

The Chicago Tribune explains it all.

If you subscribe to the DVD-rental service, the Netflix warehouse, which you know must exist somewhere; which a P.O. Box on every Netflix envelope suggests does exist; which processes your Netflix queue with alarming efficiency; which you bet will be as magical as you imagined if you ever stumble on it, overrun with dancing Oompa Loompas in matching jumpsuits of Netflix red, is one of those mythical New Economy temples.

Like an Amazon warehouse. Or an Apple warehouse. One imagines miles of pop ephemera between its brick-and-mortar walls — one imagines that limitless building from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but with 15,000 copies of ” Confessions of a Shopaholic.”

The truth is stranger.

PS:  It all happens in Carol Stream, a suburb of Chicago.

Have you ever seen your luggage go flying off a luggage cart at an airport?  I have.  Well, not my luggage, but someone’s luggage.  At the Cincinnati airport I was on one of the shuttle buses they have there to take you from terminal C to the real airport.   A luggage cart in front of me took a hard turn, and a piece went flying off on the tarmac.  The cart wheeled on, heedless, and the poor piece of luggage sat there in the middle of a busy airport, pretty much guaranteeing that someone would drive over it and smush it flat.  Some weary traveler was due for a very bad day.

Karma is, as they say, a bitch.  The video below has gone viral.

There’s almost no words to adequately deride the stupidest name change ever in the history of television network re-branding, but Stephen Colbert comes pretty close.

I have a friend who several times a year will refer to a recently released movie as “the best movie ever”.  I hear that phrase from this friend something like three or four times a year, and almost always about a recently released Hollywood tentpole movie.  You know the kind; massively advertised, heavily hyped, based on Marvel or DC comic book heroes, and squarely aimed at 13 year-old boys of all ages.  Each time I want to say, “Really?  That’s The Best Movie Ever?  Is it better than the last one you said that about?”

It’s difficult for me to respect the opinion of someone who seems to indiscriminately award the title of “Best Movie Ever”.  Something like 15 or 20 in the past five years have enthusiastically received this title from this friend.  I know that this person sincerely likes these movies, and likes them far better than all those boring Oscar nominated ones, but my experience indicates that my friend is simply wrong.

Here’s Roger Ebert explaining this.

So let’s focus on those who seriously believe “Transformers” is one of the year’s best films. Are these people wrong? Yes. They are wrong. I am fond of the story I tell about Gene Siskel. When a so-called film critic defended a questionable review by saying, “after all, it’s opinion,” Gene told him: “There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact. When you say ‘The Valachi Papers’ is a better film than ‘The Godfather,’ you are wrong.” Quite true. We should respect differing opinions up to certain point, and then it’s time for the wise to blow the whistle. Sir, not only do I differ with what you say, but I would certainly not fight to the death for your right to say it. Not me. You have to pick your fights.

What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable. If someone I respect tells me I must take a closer look at the films of Abbas Kiarostami, I will take that seriously. If someone says the kung-fu movies of the 1970s, which I used for our old Dog of the Week segments, deserve serious consideration, I will listen. I will try to do what Pauline Kael said she did: Take everything you are, and all the films you’ve seen, into the theater. See the film, and decide if anything has changed. The older you are and the more films you’ve seen, the more you take into the theater. When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was remarkably gifted.

Those who think “Transformers” is a great or even a good film are, may I tactfully suggest, not sufficiently evolved. Film by film, I hope they climb a personal ladder into the realm of better films, until their standards improve. Those people contain multitudes. They deserve films that refresh the parts others do not reach. They don’t need to spend a lifetime with the water only up to their toes.

Shorter Roger Ebert:

Shorter Craig Ferguson.