Piecing things together

Hello readers, and welcome once more to UOPTA. No, that doesn't stand for Underarm Odor Prevents Terrorist Attacks, but that would certainly be an interesting development in the day-to-day functioning of our country. (Wow, I've already weirded myself out after only two sentences. That might be a Klein record.) No, folks, this is a different UOPTA, and it's this little slice of the blogosphere in which I plan on ranting and rambling today. By a show of hands, how many of you are ready for that? Excellent, excellent.

You know what I don't like? Clip shows on television. I think they are lazy and ineffective. It's impossible for someone who has never watched "Lost" to spend an hour listening to a voiceover artist and seeing clips from the past to suddenly be all caught up. It just doesn't work that way, especially with a show that has so many minor details and tiny storylines from years back that may end up being significant. What's worse is that the producers (or network - not sure who gets the full blame here) didn't come out and tell us that it was just going to be a bunch of clips. Instead, they said something about seeing stories from a whole new perspective. Since "Lost" is always re-packaging things that happened in the past, there was a possibility that this would be a new episode focused on events we've already seen. Nope, it was just clips, and it pissed me off. If they just told us, "We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode, but come back next week to re-watch some of your favorite storylines in a recap special," then I would be just fine with it. Nope, they threw in that "whole new perspective" bullshit and tried to trick people into thinking they were going to see something different. My lovely wife and I watched the first five minutes, she told me she was bored, and then we 2x fast-forwarded until the DVR caught up at about 40 minutes into it. I saw nothing new at all, but I kept it on the DVR in case some article online the next morning told me about the amazing five new minutes at the end, or something like that. That didn't happen.

To be fair, I realize that a show full of clips from previous episodes can have its place in the world. It has to be a specific kind of show though, in my opinion. Take the "Law and Order" franchise, for example. The shows are almost entirely self-contained, and storylines don't carry over into the next episodes. "Law and Order" could have a ten-minute long clip show, and then anyone could step right into the next episode and know what's going on. I believe the "CSI" franchise is like that as well, but I've never seen a single show from any of their incarnations, so I can't tell you for sure. "House" is similar but seems to have a little more carry-over. It could probably be summed up nicely though.

Now I'm thinking about other shows I watch and whether they can or can't be encapsulated into a clip show so that people could pick it up mid-season and know what's going on. "24" would be hilarious. The clip show would basically show a crisis, Jack saving the day, someone announcing that it's not over yet, another crisis, Jack saving the day, someone announcing that it's not over yet, another crisis, Jack saving the day, and so on. A couple dozen more cycles of that, and someone could probably step in near the end of this season and know what's going on. Stringing the various crises together like that would be really funny and draw attention to how ridiculous that show is, so naturally, I hope they do that someday.

The bottom line is this: clip shows may or may not be effective, but please just let us know when they're happening ahead of time. That way, people who want to see a retrospective of sorts and try catching up on a series know when to tune in, and devoted fans won't be upset that they were duped into thinking that there would be new content. That's all I'm saying, folks.

I'm going to switch gears now and find my way into another medium of arts and entertainment: music! When it comes to one's music collection, I find that I was either way behind or way ahead of the curve, depending on my conversation partner. Specifically, I'm talking about iTunes. I know many people who started using that service years before I did and have all of their music stored digitally on external hard drives and yadda yadda yadda. And yet there are many others I know who have never spent a single second on iTunes. Well, I've been using it for a little while now, and I'm rather attached to a lot of the functionality. I'm having one very Peterish problem with it right now, and I'd like to share.

As I've documented here in the past, I often make tasks more difficult than they need to be by adding additional levels of difficulty. Something starts off as a whim or a little joke, and then suddenly I'm writing a haiku for my boss every morning, for example. Well, I couldn't just leave well enough alone with the Playlist function on iTunes. It's simple enough in theory; you put groupings of songs together like little mix tapes and play them at your liking. And I started off simply too. I have mixes that my friend Jon physically gave me on cd that I transferred to iTunes, with exciting playlist names like, "Jon's b-day mix," "Jon's X-mas mix," and the always-popular, "Jon's mix." I also have cds I made for my lovely wife as playlists, known affectionately as "Shits and Giggles, Volume 1-4." I couldn't leave well enough alone though.

Before long, I started thinking up themed playlists that I could have. Being a little self-centered, I started by thinking about my name in songs. I own "Stove/Smother" by Sloan, "The Ballad of John and Yoko" by the Beatles, and "My Friend Peter" by Alkaline Trio, all of which have my name at some point in the lyrics. "I could buy 'Man on the Moon' by REM and 'Viva la Vida' by Coldplay to get to five," I thought, but stopped myself before actually taking that step. Instead, I formed different themes. First, "The Ladies" playlist was simple enough; I just went through and moved every song with female vocals over to that list. I found a problem though: what about songs with both men and women singing? And like that, "Let's Duet" was born. A little while later, I went through the approximately 1,500 songs on my work computer's iTunes to see how many I considered to be funny. It took a while, but I created my "Funny Shit" playlist. Did I stop there? Of course not.

I was listening to a song called "Detroit" by a band named Black Gold, and I got an idea: what if I made a geographically-themed playlist? Off the top of my head, I could think of songs with New York, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, and Los Angeles in their titles. Maybe I could make a east-to-west road trip or vice versa. Yeah, I know that's pretty nerdy. So I went through all of my songs again, and I had underestimated the geographical nature of my music collection. Not only did I have a lot of cities, but a good number of states, countries, and even continents. It's pretty funny to me how nonsensical the "road trip" becomes when sorted alphabetically by song title. I start in Amsterdam (Guster), go to Anne Arbour (The Get Up Kids), take a long boat ride to Antarctica (The Weepies), and then head on over to Australia (The Shins). That's a roundabout trip, don't you think? I put it on Shuffle while at work one day this week, and I laughed to myself as I went from Hiroshima (Ben Folds) to Mexico City (Jolie Holland) to the superbly named "The Infant of Prague Customized My Van" by The Dead Milkmen.

Where will playlist inspiration strike next? I could have a group of songs with 5+ words in their titles. The only overlap I see is the aforementioned Dead Milkmen song and "The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel. At the very least, I'd get to hear The Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and my Monkey" more often. Ah, drugs have some wonderful side effects.

And with that, let's ride our psychedelic waves on over to the Car Watch, man.

I was behind a vehicle on the freeway this week that said, "YOUTH BUS" on its sides and back. I couldn't help but wonder how big it's gonna get when it's all grown up.

My homey Rockabye sent me a plate that he couldn't quite figure out. It read, "JZ4PLAE." He was pretty sure that it ended in "foreplay" or maybe "for play," but didn't know if the beginning was "jazz," "jizz," or rapper "Jay Z." While "jizz foreplay" would certainly be the most R-rated license plate I've seen in a long time, something just tells me that it's about jazz instead. What would "jazz foreplay" be though? Tickling the ivories? Lightly slapping the drums? Softly blowing the trumpet? Ok, I'm starting to make myself uncomfortable.

And lastly, I saw a plate that said, "92 MEOWS." Now what in the world could that be about? Even if it was a crazy cat lady driving, I hope I'm right in assuming that she can't have that many cats. Maybe she...nope, I got nothing. I was honestly about to theorize that the driver is crazy and thinks that individual years make different sounds, and '92 happens to sound like a cat. Then I realized that by coming up with that, I may be just as crazy as my theoretical driver whose personality I'm making up willy-nilly. Good thing I stopped myself before going to far with that one.

Ok, that's it for me, homepeople. I'll be back for more musings and stories next Friday. In the meantime, here are the coming happies: Happy Anniversary to our friends Candice and Scott on Sunday, which is also my friend Alicia's half-birthday. Happy half-birthday to Regina on Wednesday, who is partially responsible for me and my lovely wife meeting. Happy birthday next Thursday to my wonderful Grandma, who has always encouraged as much creativity as I can muster, and happy non-existent half-birthday to our dog Hallie, who is penalized by April's lack of 31st day. Take care everyone, and shaloha.